The Tenderness of Wolves

DISAPPEARANCE

The last time I saw Laurent Jammet, he was in Scott’s store with a dead wolf over his shoulder. I had gone to get needles, and he had come in for the bounty. Scott insisted on the whole carcass, having once been bamboozled by a Yankee who brought in a pair of ears one day and claimed his bounty, then some time later brought in the paws for another dollar, and finally the tail. It was winter and the parts looked fairly fresh, but the con became common knowledge, to Scott’s disgust. So the wolf’s face was the first thing I saw when I walked in. The tongue lolled out of the mouth, which was pulled back in a grimace. I flinched, despite myself. Scott yelled and Jammet apologised profusely; it was impossible to be angry with him, what with his charm and his limp. The carcass was removed out back somewhere, and as I was browsing, they began to argue about the moth-eaten pelt that hangs over the door. I think Jammet suggested jokingly that Scott replace it with a new one. The sign under it reads, ‘Canis lupus (male), the first wolf to be caught in the Town of Caulfield, 11th February, 1860.’ The sign tells you a lot about John Scott, demonstrating his pretensions to learning, his self-importance and the craven respect for authority over truth. It certainly wasn’t the first wolf to be caught round here, and there is no such thing as the town of Caulfield, strictly speaking, although he would like there to be, because then there would be a Council, and he could be its Mayor.

‘Anyway, that is a female. Males have a darker collar, and are bigger. This one is very small.’

Jammet knew what he was talking about, as he had caught more wolves than anyone else I know. He smiled, to show he meant no offence, but Scott takes offence like it is going out of fashion, and bristled.

‘I suppose you remember better than I do, Mr Jammet?’

Jammet shrugged. Since he wasn’t here in 1860, and since he was French, unlike the rest of us, he had to watch his step.

At this point I stepped up to the counter. ‘I think it was a female, Mr Scott. The man who brought it in said her cubs howled all night. I remember it distinctly.’

And the way Scott strung up the carcass by its back legs outside the store for everyone to gawp at. I had never seen a wolf before, and I was surprised at its smallness. It hung with its nose pointing at the ground, eyes closed as if ashamed. Men mocked the carcass, and children laughed, daring each other to put their hands in its mouth. They posed with it for each other’s amusement.

Scott turned tiny, bright blue eyes on me, either affronted that I should side with a foreigner, or just affronted, it was hard to tell.

‘And look what happened to him.’ Doc Wade, the man who brought in the bounty, drowned the following spring–as though that threw his judgement into question.

‘Ah, well …’ Jammet shrugged and winked at me, the cheek.

Somehow–I think Scott mentioned it first–we got talking about those poor girls, as people usually do when the subject of wolves is raised. Although there are any number of unfortunate females in the world (plenty in my experience alone), around here ‘those poor girls’ always refers to only two–the Seton sisters, who vanished all those years ago. There was a few minutes’ pleasant and pointless exchange of views that broke off suddenly when the bell rang and Mrs Knox came in. We pretended to be very interested in the buttons on the counter. Laurent Jammet took his dollar, bowed to me and Mrs Knox, and left. The bell jangled on its metal spring for a long time after he walked out.

That was all, nothing significant about it. The last time I saw him.

Laurent Jammet was our closest neighbour. Despite this, his life was a mystery to us. I used to wonder how he hunted wolves with his bad leg, and then someone told me that he baited deer meat with strychnine. The skill came in following the trail to the resulting corpse. I don’t know though; that is not hunting as I see it. I know wolves have learnt to stay out of range of a Winchester rifle, so they cannot be entirely stupid, but they are not so clever that they have learnt to distrust a free gift of food, and where is the merit in following a doomed creature to its end? There were other unusual things about him: long trips away from home in parts unknown; visits from dark, taciturn strangers; and brief displays of startling generosity, in sharp counterpoint to his dilapidated cabin. We knew that he was from Quebec. We knew that he was Catholic, although he did not often go to church or to confession (though he may have indulged in both during his long absences). He was polite and cheerful, although he did not have particular friends, and kept a certain distance. And he was, I dare say, handsome, with almost-black hair and eyes, and features that gave the impression of having just finished smiling, or being just about to start. He treated all women with the same respectful charm, but managed not to irritate either them or their husbands. He was not married and showed no inclination to do so, but I have noticed that some men are happier on their own, especially if they are rather slovenly and irregular in their habits.

Some people attract an idle and entirely unmalicious envy. Jammet was one of those, lazy and good-natured, who seem to slide through life without toil or effort. I thought him lucky, because he did not seem to worry about those things that turn the rest of us grey. He had no grey hairs, but he had a past, which he kept mostly to himself. He imagined himself to have a future, too, I suppose, but he did not. He was perhaps forty. It was as old as he would ever get.

It is a Thursday morning in mid-November, about two weeks after that meeting in the store. I walk down the road from our house in a dreadful temper, planning my lecture carefully. More than likely I rehearse it aloud–one of many strange habits that are all too easy to pick up in the backwoods. The road–actually little more than a series of ruts worn by hooves and wheels–follows the river where it plunges down a series of shallow falls. Under the birches patches of moss gleam emerald in the sunlight. Fallen leaves, crystallised by the night’s frost, crackle under my feet, whispering of the coming winter. The sky is an achingly clear blue. I walk quickly in my anger, head high. It probably makes me look cheerful.

Jammet’s cabin sits away from the riverbank in a patch of weeds that passes for a garden. The unpeeled log walls have faded over the years until the whole thing looks grey and woolly, more like a living growth than a building. It is something from a bygone age: the door is buckskin stretched over a wooden frame, the windows glazed with oiled parchment. In winter he must freeze. It’s not a place where the women of Dove River often call, and I haven’t been here myself for months, but right now I have run out of places to look.

There is no smoke signal of life inside, but the door stands ajar; the buckskin stained from earthy hands. I call out, then knock on the wall. There is no reply, so I peer inside, and when my eyes have adjusted to the dimness I see Jammet, at home and, true to form, asleep on his bed at this time in the morning. I nearly walk away then, thinking there is no point waking him, but frustration makes me persevere. I haven’t come all this way for nothing.

‘Mr Jammet?’ I start off, sounding, to my mind, irritatingly bright. ‘Mr Jammet, I am sorry to disturb you but I must ask …’

Laurent Jammet sleeps peacefully. Round his neck is the red neckerchief he wears for hunting, so that other hunters will not mistake him for a bear and shoot him. One foot protrudes off the side of the bed, in a dirty sock. His red neckerchief is on the table … I have grasped the side of the door. Suddenly, from being normal, everything has changed completely: flies hover round their late autumn feast; the red neckerchief is not round his neck, it cannot be, because it is on the table, and that means …

‘Oh,’ I say, and the sound shocks me in the silent cabin. ‘No.’

I cling onto the door, trying not to run away, although I realise a second later I couldn’t move if my life depended on it.

The redness round his neck has leaked into the mattress from a gash. A gash. I’m panting, as though I’ve been running. The doorframe is the most important thing in the world right now. Without it, I don’t know what I would do.

The neckerchief has not done its duty. It has failed to prevent his untimely death.

I don’t pretend to be particularly brave, and in fact long ago gave up the notion that I have any remarkable qualities, but I am surprised at the calmness with which I look around the cabin. My first thought is that Jammet has destroyed himself, but Jammet’s hands are empty, and there is no sign of a weapon near him. One hand dangles off the side of the bed. It does not occur to me to be afraid. I know with absolute certainty that whoever did this is nowhere near–the cabin proclaims its emptiness. Even the body on the bed is empty. There are no attributes to it now–the cheerfulness and slovenliness and skill at shooting, the generosity and callousness–they have all gone.

There is one other thing I can’t help but notice, as his face is turned slightly away from me. I don’t want to see it but it’s there, and it confirms what I have already unwillingly accepted–that among all the things in the world that can never be known, Laurent Jammet’s fate is not one of them. This is no accident, nor is it self-destruction. He has been scalped.

At length, although it is probably only a few seconds later, I pull the door closed behind me, and when I can’t see him any more, I feel better. Although for the rest of that day, and for days after, my right hand aches from the violence with which I gripped the doorframe, as though I had been trying to knead the wood between my fingers, like dough.

We live in Dove River, on the north shore of Georgian Bay. My husband and I emigrated from the Highlands of Scotland a dozen years ago, driven out like so many others. A million and a half people arrived in North America in just a few years, but despite the numbers involved, despite being so crammed into the hold of a ship that you thought there couldn’t possibly be room in the New World for all these people, we fanned out from the landing stages at Halifax and Montreal like the tributaries of a river, and disappeared, every one, into the wilderness. The land swallowed us up, and was hungry for more. Hacking land out of the forest, we gave our places names that sprang from things we saw–a bird, an animal–or the names of old home towns; sentimental reminders of places that had no sentiment for us. It just goes to show you can’t leave anything behind. You bring it all with you, whether you want to or not.

A dozen years ago there was nothing here but trees. The country to the north of here is a mean land that is either bog or stones, where even the willows and tamaracks cannot take hold. But near the river the soil is soft and deep, the forest around it so dark green it is almost black, and the sharp scented silence feels as deep and endless as the sky. My first reaction, when I saw it, was to burst into tears. The cariole that brought us rattled away, and the thought that, however loudly I screamed, only the wind would answer, could not be pushed away. Still, if the idea was to find peace and quiet, we had succeeded. My husband waited calmly for my fit of hysteria to subside, then said, with a grim sort of smile:

‘Out here, there is nothing greater than God.’

Assuming you believe in that sort of thing, it seemed a safe bet.

In time I got used to the silence, and the thinness of the air that made everything seem brighter and sharper than it had back home. I even grew to like it. And I named it, since it had no name that anyone knew of: Dove River.

I’m not immune to sentimentality myself.

Others came. Then John Scott built the flour mill near the river mouth, and having spent so much money on it, and it having such a nice view of the bay, decided he might as well live in it. Somehow this started a fashion for living near the shore, inexplicable to those of us who had gone upriver precisely to escape the howling storms when the Bay seems to turn into an angry ocean intent on clawing back the land you have so presumptuously settled. But Caulfield (sentiment again; Scott is from Dumfriesshire) took in a way that Dove River never could–because of the abundance of level land and relative sparseness of the forest, and because Scott opened a dry goods store that made backwoods life a lot easier. Now there is a community of over a hundred–a strange mix of Scots and Yankees. And Laurent Jammet. He hasn’t–hadn’t–been here long, and probably would never have moved here at all had he not taken the piece of land that no one else would touch.

Four years ago he bought the farm downstream from ours. It had been lying empty for some time, on account of the previous owner, an elderly Scot. Doc Wade arrived in Dove River seeking cheap land where he would not be so much under the noses of those who judged him–he had a wealthy sister and brother-in-law in Toronto. People called him Doc, although it turned out he was not a doctor at all, just a man of culture who had not found a place in the New World that appreciated his varied but nebulous talents. Unfortunately Dove River was not the exception he was looking for. As many men have found, farming is a slow, sure way to lose your fortune, destroy your health, and break your spirit. The work was too heavy for a man of his age, and his heart was not in it. His crops failed, his pigs ran wild in the forest, his cabin roof caught fire. One evening he slipped on the rock that forms a natural jetty in front of his cabin, and was later found in the deep eddy below Horsehead Bluff (so named, with that refreshing Canadian lack of imagination, because it resembles a horse’s head). It was a merciful release after his troubles, said some. Others called it a tragedy–the sort of small, domestic tragedy the bush is littered with. I suppose I imagined it differently. Wade drank, like most men. One night, when his money was gone and the whisky finished, when there was nothing left for him to do in this world, he went down to the river and watched the cold black water rushing past. I imagine he looked up at the sky, heard the mocking, indifferent voice of the forest one last time, felt the tug of the swollen river, and cast himself onto its infinite mercy.

Afterwards, local gossip said that the land was unlucky, but it was cheap and Jammet was not one to take note of superstitious rumours, although perhaps he should have. He had been a voyageur for the Company, and had fallen under a canoe while hauling it up some rapids. The accident lamed him, and they gave him compensation. He seemed grateful rather than otherwise for his accident, which gave him enough money to buy his own land. He was fond of saying how lazy he was, and certainly he did not do the farm work that most men cannot avoid. He sold off most of Wade’s land and made his living from the wolf bounty and a little trading. Every spring a succession of dark, long-distance men would come from the northwest with their canoes and packs. They found him a congenial person to do business with.

Half an hour later I am knocking on the door of the biggest house in Caulfield. I flex the fingers of my right hand as I wait for an answer–they seem to have seized up into a sort of claw.

Mr Knox has a poor, greyish complexion that makes me think of liver salts, and is tall and thin, with a hatchet profile that seems permanently poised to strike down the unworthy–useful attributes for a magistrate. I suddenly feel as empty as if I had not eaten for a week.

‘Ah, Mrs Ross … an unexpected pleasure …’

To tell the truth he looks, more than anything, alarmed at the sight of me. Perhaps he looks at everyone this way, but it gives the impression he knows slightly more about me than I would like, and thus knows I am not the sort of person he would want his daughters to associate with.

‘Mr Knox … I’m afraid it is not a pleasure. There has been a … a terrible accident.’

Scenting gossip of the richest sort, Mrs Knox comes in a minute later, and I tell them both what is in the cabin by the river. Mrs Knox clutches at the little gold cross at her throat. Knox receives the news calmly, but turns away at one point, and turns back, having, I can’t help feeling, composed his features into a suitable cast–grim, stern, resolute, and so on. Mrs Knox sits beside me stroking my hand while I try not to snatch it away.

‘And to think, the last time I saw him was in the store that time. He looked so …’

I nod in agreement, thinking how we had fallen into a guilty silence on her approach. After many protestations of shocked sympathy and advice for shattered nerves, she rushes off to inform their two daughters in a suitable way (in other words, with far more detail than if their father were present). Knox dispatches a messenger to Fort Edgar to summon some Company men. He leaves me to admire the view, then returns to say he has summoned John Scott (who, in addition to owning the store and flour mill, has several warehouses and a great deal of land) to go with him to examine the cabin and secure it against ‘intrusion’ until the Company representatives arrive. That is the word he uses, and I feel a certain criticism. Not that he can blame me for finding the body, but I am sure he regrets that a mere farmer’s wife has sullied the scene before he has had a chance to exercise his superior faculties. But I sense something else in him too, other than his disapproval–excitement. He sees a chance for himself to shine in a drama far more urgent than most that occur in the backwoods–he is going to investigate. I presume he takes Scott so that it looks official and there is a witness to his genius, and because Scott’s age and wealth give him a sort of status. It can be nothing to do with intelligence–Scott is living proof that the wealthy are not necessarily better or cleverer than the rest of us.

We head upriver in Knox’s trap. Since Jammet’s cabin is close to our house, they cannot avoid my accompanying them, and since we reach his cabin first, I offer to come in with them. Knox wrinkles his brow with avuncular concern.

‘You must be exhausted after your terrible shock. I insist that you go home and rest.’

‘We will be able to see whatever you saw,’ Scott adds. And more, is the implication.

I turn away from Scott–there is no point arguing with some people–and address the hatchet profile. He is affronted, I realise, that my feminine nature can bear the thought of confronting such horror again. But something inside me hardens stubbornly against his assumption that he and only he will draw the right conclusions. Or perhaps it is just that I don’t like being told what to do. I say I can tell them if anything has been disturbed, which they cannot deny, and anyway, short of manhandling me down the track and locking me in my house, there is little they can do.

The autumn weather is being kind, but there is the faint tang of decay when Knox pulls open the door. I didn’t notice it before. Knox steps forward, breathing through his mouth and puts his fingers on Jammet’s hand–I see him hover, wondering where to touch him–before pronouncing him quite cold. The two men speak in low voices, almost whispering. I understand–to speak louder would be rude. Scott takes out a notebook and writes down what Knox says as he observes the position of the body, the temperature of the stove, the arrangement of items in the room. Then Knox stands for a while doing nothing, but still manages to look purposeful–an accident of anatomy I observe with interest. There is a scuff of footprints on the dusty floor, but no strange objects, no weapon of any sort. The only clue is that awful round wound on Jammet’s head. It must have been an Indian outlaw, Knox says. Scott agrees: no white man could do something so barbaric. I picture his wife’s face last winter, when it was swollen black and blue and she claimed she had slipped on a patch of ice, although everybody knew the truth.

The men go upstairs to the other room. I can tell where they go by the creak of their feet pressing on floorboards and the dust that falls between them and catches the light. It trickles onto Jammet’s corpse, falling softly on his cheek, like snowflakes. Little flecks land, unbearably, on his open eyes and I can’t take my gaze off them. I have an urge to go and brush it off, tell them sharply to stop disturbing things, but I don’t do either. I can’t make myself touch him.

‘No one has been up there for days–the dust was quite undisturbed,’ says Knox when they are down again, flicking dirt off their trousers with pocket-handkerchiefs. Knox has brought a clean sheet from upstairs, and he shakes it out, sending more dust motes whirling round the room like a swarm of sunlit bees. He places the sheet over the body on the bed.

‘There, that should keep the flies off,’ he says with an air of self-congratulation, though any fool can see that it will do no such thing.

It is decided that we–or rather they–can do no more, and on leaving, Knox closes and secures the door with a length of wire and a blob of sealing wax. A detail that, though I hate to admit it, impresses me.

When the weather turns cold Andrew Knox is made painfully aware of his age. Every autumn for some years now his joints have started to hurt, and go on hurting all winter no matter how many layers of flannel and wool he wraps them in. He has to walk gingerly, to accommodate the shooting pains in each hip. Each autumn the pains start a little earlier.

But today weariness spreads through his entire soul. He tells himself that it is understandable–a violent event like murder is bound to shake anyone. But it is more than that. No one has been murdered in the history of the two villages. We came here to get away from all that, he thinks: we were supposed to leave that behind when we left the cities. And yet the strangeness of it … a brutal barbarian killing, like something that would happen in the southern States. In the past few years several people have died of old age, of course, of fever or accident, not to mention those poor girls … But no one has been slaughtered, defenceless in their stockinged feet. He is upset by the victim’s shoelessness.

He reads through Scott’s notes after dinner, and tries not to lose his patience: ‘The stove is three feet high and one foot eight inches deep, faintly warm to the touch.’ He supposes this might be useful. Assuming the fire was going strongly at the time of death, it could take thirty-six hours to become cold. So the murder could have happened the day before. Unless the fire had already started to die down when Jammet met his end, in which case it could have happened during the night. But it is not inconceivable that it took place the previous night. In their search today they found little. There were no clear signs of a struggle; no blood other than on the bed, where he must have been attacked. They wondered aloud whether the place had been searched, but his belongings were scattered so haphazardly–their usual state, according to Mrs Ross–that it was impossible to be certain. Scott protested loudly that it must be a native: no white man could do something so barbaric. Knox is less sure. Some years ago Knox was called to a farm near Coppermine, after a particularly regrettable incident. There is a practice popular in some communities whereby a groom is ritually humiliated on his wedding night. It is known as a ‘charivari’ and is meant as a genial show of disapproval at, say, an old man taking a much younger wife. In this case the elderly bridegroom had been tarred and feathered and strung up by his feet from a tree outside his own house, while local youths paraded in masks, banging kettles and blowing whistles.

A prank. Youthful high spirits.

But somehow the man had died. Knox knew of at least one youth who was unquestionably involved in the business, but no one, despite their regret, would speak out. A prank gone wrong? Scott had not seen the man’s suffused face; the wires cutting savagely into bloated ankles. Andrew Knox feels unable to exempt a whole race from suspicion on the grounds that they are incapable of cruelty.

He has become aware of the sounds beyond the window. Outside his walls there may be a force of evil. Perhaps the sort of cunning that would think to scalp a man to throw suspicion onto those of a different colour. Please God, not a Caulfield man. And what motive can there have been for this death? Surely not the theft of Jammet’s old and ill-used possessions. Did he have a secret cache of wealth? Did he have enemies among the men he traded with–perhaps an unpaid debt?

He sighs, dissatisfied with his thoughts. He had been so sure that seeing the cabin would provide him with clues, if not answers, but he is left with less certainty than before. It hurts his vanity to admit that he could not read the signs, especially in front of Mrs Ross–a provoking woman who always makes him feel uncomfortable. Her sardonic gaze never softened, even when describing her appalling discovery, or confronting it for the second time. She is not popular in the town, for she gives the impression of looking down her nose at people, although by all accounts (and he has heard some pretty hair-raising gossip) she has nothing to be conceited about. However, to look at her and to recall some of these lurid stories is to find them incredible: she has a regal bearing, and an admittedly handsome face, although her prickly manner is not compatible with true beauty. He had been aware of her eyes on him when he stepped up to the corpse to feel for warmth. He could barely keep his hand from trembling–there seemed to be no flesh free from blood to touch. He took a deep breath (which only made him feel nauseous) and placed his fingers on the dead man’s wrist.

The skin was cold, but felt otherwise human, normal; like his own skin. He tried to keep his eyes off the terrible wound but, like the flies, they seemed unable to stay away. Jammet’s eyes stared up at him, and it occurred to Knox that he was standing where the killer must have stood. He hadn’t been asleep, not at the end. He felt he ought to close the eyes but knew he wouldn’t be able to do so. Shortly afterwards he fetched a sheet from upstairs and covered the body. The blood was dry and wouldn’t stain, he said–as if it mattered. He tried to cover his confusion with another practical remark, hating the hearty sound of his own voice as he did so. At least tomorrow it will not be his sole responsibility any more–the Company men will arrive and, probably, they will know what to do. Probably, something will become apparent, someone will have seen something, and by evening it will have been solved.

And with this spurious hope, Knox tidily rearranges the papers into a pile and blows out the lamp.

It is past midnight, but I sit up with a lamp and a book I am unable to read, waiting for a footstep, for the door to open and cold air to fill the kitchen. I find myself thinking yet again about those poor girls. Everyone in Dove River and Caulfield knows the story, and it is recounted to anyone who comes here, or repeated over and again with subtle variations on winter evenings in front of the fire. Like all the best stories, it is a tragedy.

The Setons were a respectable family from St Pierre La Roche. Charles Seton was a doctor, and his wife Maria a recent Scottish immigrant. They had two daughters who were their pride and joy (as they say, though when are children ever not?). On a mild day in September Amy, who was fifteen, and Eve, thirteen, set off with a friend called Cathy Sloan to gather berries and picnic by the banks of a lake. They knew the way, and all three girls had been brought up in the bush, were familiar with its dangers and respected its code: never stray from the paths, never stay out after dusk. Cathy was exceptionally pretty, famous in the town for her looks. This detail is always added, as though it makes what happened even more tragic, although I cannot personally see that it matters.

The girls set off with a basket of food and drink at nine in the morning. At four, the time by which they should have returned, there was no sign of them. Their parents waited a further hour, then the two fathers set out to trace their daughters’ footsteps. After zigzagging around the path, calling constantly, they arrived at the lake, and searched, still calling, until after dark, but found no sign of them. Then they returned, thinking it possible that their daughters had taken another route and had by now arrived home, but the girls were not there.

A massive search was got up, and everyone in the town turned out to help look for the children. Mrs Seton took to fainting fits. On the evening of the second day, Cathy Sloan walked back into St Pierre. She was weak and her clothes were filthy. She had lost her jacket and one of her shoes, but was still holding the basket that had contained their lunch; apparently now (grotesque detail and probably untrue) it was full of leaves. The searchers redoubled their efforts, but they never found a thing. Not a shoe, not a scrap of clothing, not even a footprint. It was as though a hole had opened in the ground and swallowed them up.

Cathy Sloan was put to bed, although whether she was actually ill was a moot point. She said that she had had some sort of argument with Eve shortly after setting off, and had dawdled behind the other two until losing them from sight. She walked to the lake and called for them, thinking they were mean to have hidden from her. She became lost in the woods and could not find the path. She never saw the Seton sisters again.

They townspeople went on searching, sending delegations to the nearby Indian villages, for suspicion fell on them as naturally as rain falls on the ground. But not only did they swear their innocence on the Bible, there was not a scrap of evidence of a kidnapping. The Setons looked further and further afield. Charles Seton hired men to help him look, including an Indian tracker and then, after Mrs Seton had died, seemingly of a broken heart, a man from the States who was a professional searcher. The searcher travelled to Indian bands all over Upper Canada and beyond, but found nothing.

Months became years. At the age of fifty-two Charles Seton died, exhausted, penniless and at a loss. Cathy Sloan was never quite the beauty she had been; she seemed dull and stupid–or had she always been that way? No one could any longer remember. The story of the case spread far and wide, and then passed into legend, recounted by schoolchildren with wild inconsistencies, told by frazzled mothers to curb their children’s wandering. Wilder and wilder theories grew up as to what had happened to the two girls; people wrote from far-flung addresses claiming to have seen them, or married them, or to be them, but none ever proved well founded. In the end, no explanation could possibly fill the void left by the disappearance of Amy and Eve Seton.

All that was fifteen years ago or more. The Setons are both dead now; first the mother died of grief, then the father, bankrupt and exhausted by his relentless quest. But the story of the girls belongs to us because Mrs Seton’s sister is married to Mr Knox, and that is why we fell into a guilty silence when she came into the store that day. I do not know her particularly well, but I do know that she never speaks of it. Presumably, on winter evenings in front of the fire, she talks of something else.

People disappear. I’m trying not to assume the worst, but all the lurid theories about the girls’ disappearance are haunting me now. My husband has gone to bed. Either he isn’t worried, or he is indifferent–it is years since I could tell what he was thinking. I suppose that is the nature of marriage, or perhaps it just goes to show that I am not very good at it. My neighbour Ann Pretty would probably incline towards the latter; she has a thousand ways of implying that I am deficient in my wifely duties–when you think of it, an astonishing feat for a woman of such little sophistication.

She holds my lack of living natural children as a sign of failure to do my immigrant duty, which is, apparently, to raise a workforce large enough to run a farm without hiring outside help. A common enough response in such a vast, underpopulated country. I sometimes think that the settlers reproduce so heroically as a terrified response to the size and emptiness of the land, as though they could hope to fill it with their offspring. Or maybe they are afraid that a child can slip away so easily, they must always have more. Maybe they are right.

When I got back to the house this afternoon Angus was back. I told him about Jammet’s death, and he examined his pipe for a long time, as he does when he is deep in thought. I found myself close to tears, although I did not know Jammet well. Angus knew him better; had gone hunting with him on occasion. But I could not read the currents moving under his skin. Later we sat in the kitchen at our usual places, eating in silence. Between us, on the south side of the table, another place was set. Neither of us referred to it.

Many years ago, my husband took a trip back east. He was gone for three weeks, after which he sent a telegram saying to expect him back on the Sunday. We had not spent a night apart in four years, and I looked forward keenly to his return. When I heard the rumble of wheels on the road, I ran to meet him, then saw, puzzled, that there were two people in the cart. As the cart came closer I saw that it was a child of about five years, a girl. Angus pulled up the pony and I ran towards them, my heart beating thickly in my throat. The girl was asleep, long lashes lying on her sallow cheeks. Her hair was black. Her eyebrows were black. Purple veins showed through her eyelids. She was beautiful. And I couldn’t speak. I just stared.

‘The French Sisters had them. Their parents died of plague. I heard about it and went to the convent. There were all these children. I tried to get one who would be the right age, but …’ He trailed off. Our infant daughter had died the year before. ‘But she was the bonniest.’ He took a deep breath. ‘We could call her Olivia. I don’t know if you’d want to, or …’

I threw my arms round his neck and suddenly found that my face was wet. He held me tight, and then the child opened her eyes.

‘My name is Frances,’ she said in a noticeable Irish brogue. She had a sharp look about her with her eyes open; alert.

‘Hello Frances,’ I said, nervous. What if she didn’t like us?

‘Are you going to be my Mama?’ she asked.

I felt my face go hot as I nodded. She went quiet after that. We took her inside and I made the nicest dinner I could muster–whitefish and vegetables and tea with lots of sugar, although she didn’t eat much, and stared at the fish as though she wasn’t sure what it was. She didn’t say another word, her dark blue eyes flickering from one of us to the other. She was exhausted. I picked her up in my arms and carried her upstairs. The sensation of holding this hot, limp body made me tremble with feeling. Her bones felt fragile under my hands and she smelt stale, like an unaired room. Since she was almost asleep I just took off the dress, shoes and socks, and tucked a blanket around her. I watched as she twitched in her sleep.

Frances’s parents had arrived at Belle Isle aboard a packet ship called the Sarah. The steerage was packed with Irish from County Mayo, which was still suffering after the potato famine. Like those people who catch onto a fad long after it has gone out of fashion, they developed typhus fever on board, although the worst of the epidemics had subsided. Nearly a hundred men, women and children died on that ship, which sank on its return journey to Liverpool. Several children were orphaned and had been taken to the nunnery until they could be found homes.

The next morning I went to the spare room to find Frances still asleep, although when I touched her shoulder gently I had the impression that she was pretending. I realised she was scared; perhaps she had heard terrible stories about Canadian farmers and thought we were going to treat her as a slave. Smiling at her, I took her hand and led her downstairs to where I’d prepared a tub of hot water in front of the stove. She kept her eyes on the floor as she lifted her arms for me to peel off the long petticoat.

I ran out of the house, looking for Angus, who was splitting wood at the corner of the house.

‘Angus,’ I hissed, feeling angry and stupid at the same time.

He turned round, axe in hand, frowning at me, puzzled. ‘Is something wrong? Is she all right?’

I shook my head to the first question. It occurred to me that he knew, yet I instantly dismissed the idea. Used to me, he turned back to the log; down came the axe; neat halves span into the log basket.

‘Angus, you got a boy.’

He put the axe down. He didn’t know. We went back inside to where the child was playing idly with the soap in the bathtub, letting it pop up through his fingers. His eyes were large and wary. He wasn’t surprised to see us staring at him.

‘Do you want me to go back?’ he asked.

‘No, of course not.’ I knelt beside him and took the soap from his hands. The shoulder blades stuck out like wing stumps on his skeletal back.

‘Let me.’ I took the soap and began to wash him, hoping my hands would tell him more than words that it didn’t matter. Angus went back to the woodpile, and let the door bang behind him.

Francis never seemed surprised that he had come to us dressed as a girl. We pondered for hours over the French Sisters’ motives–did they think a girl would find a home more easily than a boy? Yet there had been boys in the group of orphans. Had they simply not noticed, been blinded by the beauty of his face, and dressed him in the clothes that seemed to suit it best? Francis himself didn’t offer an explanation, or express any shame; nor did he offer resistance when I made him some trousers and shirts and cut off his long hair.

He thinks we never forgave him for it, but that’s not so with me. With my husband though, I’m not sure. A Highlander through and through, he doesn’t like to be made a fool of, and I don’t know that he ever recovered from the shock. It was all right when Francis was a child. He could be very funny, clowning and mimicking. But we all got older, and things changed, as they always seem to, for the worse. He grew into a youth who never seemed to fit with the others. I watched him try to be stoic and tough, to cultivate a foolhardy courage and that casual disrespect for danger that is common currency in the backwoods. To be a man you have to be brave and enduring, to make light of pain and hardship. Never complain. Never falter. I saw him fail. We should have lived in Toronto, or New York, then maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. But what pass for heroics in a softer world are daily chores here. He stopped trying to be like the others; he became surly and taciturn, no longer responded to affection, wouldn’t touch me.

Now he is seventeen. His Irish accent is quite gone, but in some ways he is as much a stranger as ever. He looks like the changeling he is; they say there is Spanish blood in some Irish, and to look at Francis you would believe it–he is as dark as Angus and I are fair. Ann Pretty once made a laboured joke that he had come to us from a plague, and had become our own personal plague. I was furious with her (she laughed at me, of course), but the words stuck and barge out of my memory whenever Francis is storming through the house, slamming doors and grunting as if he were barely able to speak. I have to remind myself of my own youth and bite my tongue. My husband is less tolerant. They can go for days on end without a good word passing between them.

That is why I was afraid to tell Angus that I have not seen Francis since the day before. Still, I resent him for not asking. Soon it will be morning and our son has not been home for forty-eight hours. He has done this before–he will go on solitary fishing trips that last for two or three days, and return, usually without fish and with barely a word about what he has done. I suspect that he hates to kill anything; the fishing is just a cloak for his desire to be alone.

I must have fallen asleep in the chair, because I wake when it is nearly light, stiff and cold. Francis has not returned. Much as I try and tell myself it is a coincidence, just another extended fishing-for-nothing trip, the thought keeps coming back to me that my son has disappeared on the day of the only murder that Dove River has ever known.

First light falls on three riders making their way from the west. They have been travelling for hours already, and daylight comes as a relief, especially to the man at the rear. Donald Moody finds the half-light a particular strain on his weak eyes; no matter how he rams his spectacles up against his nose, this monochrome world is full of uncertain distances and subtle, shifting shapes. It is also freezing. Even wrapped in layers of wool and a skin coat with the fur on the inside, his limbs are numb and long past aching. Donald breathes in the thin, sweet air, so different from that of his native Glasgow, sooty and raw at this time of year. The air is so clear that the unhindered sunlight seems to travel further; when the sun has just broken the horizon, like now, their shadows reach behind them forever.

His horse, which has been crowding the mount ahead, stumbles and rams its nose into the grey’s hindquarters, earning a warning swish of the tail.

‘Curse you, Moody,’ says the man in front of him. Donald’s brute of a mount is continually either lagging behind or bumping into the quarters of Mackinley’s beast.

‘Sorry sir.’ Donald tugs at the reins and the horse flattens its ears. It was bought from a Frenchman and seems to have inherited some of his anti-British prejudice.

Mackinley’s back radiates disapproval. His mount is perfectly behaved, like the horse in front of him. But then Donald is continually being reminded of his greenness–he has been in Canada just over a year and still makes huge blunders with Company etiquette. No one ever warns him in advance, because almost their sole entertainment is to watch him struggle along, falling into bogs and offending locals. Not that the other men are exactly unkind, but it is clearly the way here: the most junior member of staff must serve his apprenticeship as a figure of fun. Most of the Company men have education, courage and a spirit of adventure, and find their lives in the big country sorely lacking in incident. There is danger (as advertised), but it is the danger of frostbite or exposure rather than unarmed combat with wild animals or war with hostile natives. Their daily lives are made up of petty endurances–of cold, darkness, screaming boredom, and the overconsumption of bad liquor. Joining the Company, Donald realised early on, was like being sent to a labour camp, only with more paperwork.

The man in front, Mackinley, is the factor of Fort Edgar, and leading them is a native employee, Jacob, who insists on accompanying Donald everywhere, rather to his embarrassment. Donald does not much care for Mackinley, who is sarcastic and bluff by turns–a two-pronged method of deflecting the criticism he seems to expect from every quarter. He guesses that Mackinley is so touchy because he feels socially inferior to some of the men beneath him, Donald included, and is constantly on the look-out for signs of disrespect. Donald knows somehow that if Mackinley were less concerned about such things, he would be more respected, but the man is not likely to change now. As for himself, he is aware that Mackinley and the others regard him as a rather effete bean counter; useful enough, but hardly a real backwoods adventurer in the old style.

When he got off the ship from Glasgow, he meant to be himself, and let the men take him as they found him. But he has in fact made valiant attempts to improve his image in their eyes. For one thing, he steadily increased his tolerance of the rough alcohol that is the lifeblood of the fort, although it does not agree with him. When he first arrived he would sip politely at the rum they decanted from vast smelly barrels, thinking he had never tasted anything so disgusting. The other men noted his abstinence, and left him marooned as they journeyed into the realms of drunkenness, telling long, boring stories and laughing repeatedly at the same jokes. Donald put up with this for as long as he could, but the loneliness weighed on him until he could no longer bear it. The first time he got spectacularly drunk the men cheered, slapping him on the back when he vomited onto his knees. Through the nausea and acrid dampness Donald felt a kernel of warmth: he belonged–finally they would accept him as one of them. But, although the rum no longer tasted as bad as it once did, he was aware that the others treated him with a sort of amused tolerance. He was still just the junior accountant.

The other bright idea he had to prove himself had been to organise a rugby football match. Overall this was disastrous, but out of it had come one small ray of light, which causes him to pull himself straighter in the saddle.

Fort Edgar is a civilised posting compared to most of the Company’s forts. It lies near the shore of the Great Lake, a huddle of wooden buildings inside a palisade–the whole obstinately sheltering from a stunning prospect of islands and bay behind a belt of spruce. But what makes Fort Edgar civilised is the proximity of settlers, and the nearest are at Caulfield on Dove River. The residents of Caulfield are happy to live near the trading post as it is stocked with imported English goods and upstanding Company men. The traders are equally happy to be near Caulfield, as it is stocked with English-speaking white women, who can occasionally be persuaded to decorate the fort’s dances and other social events–like rugby matches.

On the morning of the match, he found that he was nervous. The men were sullen and bleary-eyed after a marathon drinking session, and Donald was unnerved to see a party of visitors arrive. He was even more unnerved when he met them–a tall, stern-looking man who was the image of a hell-fire preacher, and his two daughters, who were excited to be surrounded by so many youngish, unattached men.

The Knox sisters watched the proceedings politely, utterly mystified. Their father had attempted to explain the rules, as he knew them, on the journey to Fort Edgar, but his grasp of the game was rusty and he had only confused them more. The players moved around the meadow in a large ragged knot, the ball (a weighty lump stitched by a voyageur’s wife) generally invisible.

As the game progressed, the mood darkened. Donald’s team seemed to have reached a consensus to keep him out of the game, and ignored his shouts to pass to him. He ran up and down, hoping the girls could not tell that he was superfluous, when the ball came rolling towards him, leaking bits of furry stuffing. He picked it up and ran up the pitch, determined to make his mark, when he found himself on the ground, winded. A short half-breed, Jacob, grabbed the ball and ran, and Donald gave chase, determined not to let his opportunity slip. He hurled himself at Jacob, slicing the man’s legs from under him in a severe but fair tackle. A giant steersman scooped up the ball and scored.

As he lay on the ground, Donald’s triumphant cheer gurgled in his throat. He lifted his hands from his stomach to see them dark and warm, and Jacob standing over him with a knife in his hand, his features slowly animating into an expression of horror.

The spectators eventually realised something was amiss and rushed the pitch. The players gathered round Donald, whose first recognisable emotion was embarrassment. He saw the magistrate bending over him with an expression of avuncular concern.

‘… barely injured. Accident … heat of the moment.’

Jacob was distraught, tears running down his face. Knox peered at the wound. ‘Maria, pass your shawl.’

Maria, the less pretty daughter, tore off her shawl, but it was Susannah’s upside-down face that Donald fixed on as the shawl was pressed to his wound.

He began to feel a dull ache in his gut, and to notice how cold he was. The game forgotten, the players stood around awkwardly, lighting their pipes. But Donald met Susannah’s eyes, which were full of concern, and found that he no longer cared about the outcome of the match, or whether he had displayed rugged and manly qualities, or even that his lifeblood was now seeping through his capote, turning it brown. He was in love.

The wound had the strange outcome of making Jacob his undying friend. He had come to Donald’s bedside the day after the match, in tears, expressing his deep and terrible regret. It was drink that had made him do it; he had been possessed by the bad spirit, and he would atone for the injury by personally looking after Donald for as long as he remained in the country. Donald was touched, and when he smiled his forgiveness and held out his hand, Jacob smiled back. It was perhaps the first real smile of friendship he had seen in this country.

Donald staggers when he slides off his horse and tries to stamp some circulation back into his limbs. He is unwillingly impressed by the size and elegance of the house they have come to; especially thinking of Susannah, and how much more unattainable it makes her. But Knox smiles warmly at them when he comes out, then looks with ill-concealed alarm at Jacob.

‘Is this your guide?’ he asks.

‘This is Jacob,’ Donald says, feeling heat rise in his cheeks, but Jacob doesn’t seem offended.

‘A great friend of Moody’s,’ puts in Mackinley waspishly.

The magistrate is puzzled, since he is almost certain the last time he saw the man he was sticking a knife into Donald’s guts. He assumes he is mistaken.

Knox tells them what he knows and Donald takes notes. It doesn’t take long to write down the known facts. Tacitly they know there is no hope of finding the perpetrator unless someone saw something, but someone always sees something in a community like this; gossip is the lifeblood of small country places. Donald stacks fresh paper on top of his notes and straightens it with an efficient tap as they get up to visit the scene of the crime. He is not looking forward to this part and hopes he won’t disgrace himself by becoming nauseous, or–he tortures himself by imagining the worst possible outcome–what if he were to burst into tears? He has never seen a dead body before, not even his grandfather. Though this is unlikely, he imagines with an almost pleasurable horror the teasing he would endure. He would never live it down; he would have to return to Glasgow incognito, probably live under another name …

Thus engaged, the journey to the cabin passes in a flash.

News travels fast these days, thinks Thomas Sturrock. Even where there are no roads or railways, news, or its nebulous cousin rumour, travels like lightning over vast distances. It is a strange phenomenon, and one that might benefit from the attention of a diligent mind such as his. A short monograph, perhaps? The Globe or the Star might be interested in such an item, if it were amusing.

He has allowed himself to think, on occasion over the past few years, that he has become even more prepossessing with age. His hair is silver, swept back from a high and elegant forehead, worn slightly long and curling round his ears. His coat is old-fashioned but well cut and rather rakish, of a dark blue that echoes his eyes, no dimmer now than thirty years ago. His trousers are natty. His face is finely made and hawk-like, agreeably honed with outdoor living. There is a spotted and cloudy mirror hanging on the wall opposite, and it reminds him that, even in these straitened circumstances, he is a rare figure of a man. This secret vanity, which he grants himself rarely as a small (and, more importantly, free) pleasure, makes him smile at himself. ‘You are undoubtedly a ridiculous old man,’ he silently tells his reflection, sipping cold coffee.

Thomas Sturrock is engaged in his usual occupation–that of sitting in slightly shabby coffeehouses (this one is called the Rising Sun), making one cup of coffee last an hour or two. The musing about news and rumour have come from somewhere, he realises, when he finds that he is listening to a conversation being carried on behind him. Not eavesdropping–he would never stoop to such a thing–but something has caught his wandering mind and now he tries to work out what it was that hooked him … Caulfield, that was it, someone mentioned the name Caulfield. Sturrock, whose mind as well as his dress sense is as sharp as it ever was, knows someone who lives there, although he has not seen them for a while.

‘They said you’d never seen anything like it. Drenched in blood, all up the walls and everything … must have been Indian raiders …’

(Well, no one can be blamed for listening to a conversation like that.)

‘Left to rot in his cabin … had been there for days. Flies crawling over him, thick as a blanket. Imagine the smell.’

The companion agrees.

‘No reason for it, nothing was stolen. Killed in his sleep.’

‘Christ, we’ll be getting as bad as the States next. Wars and revolutions every five minutes.’

‘Could have been one of those deserters, couldn’t it?’

‘Traders ask for trouble, dealing with all sorts … Foreign, apparently, so you never know …’

‘What are we coming to …’

Etc. Etc.

At this point, Sturrock’s attention, already keen, sharpens still further. After a few more minutes of desultory doom-mongering, he can hold out no longer.

‘Excuse me, gentlemen …’

There are looks that he chooses to ignore as he turns to the two men: commercial travellers, judging from their cheap but ostentatious dress and generally low-class demeanour.

‘I do apologise. I know what a terrible bore it is when strangers butt in on one’s conversation, but I have a personal interest in what you have just been discussing. You see, I have some business with a trader who lives near Caulfield, and I couldn’t help noticing you describing–very graphically–a particularly shocking and tragic occurrence. Obviously I could not help but become concerned at such a story, and I only hope that it doesn’t involve my acquaintance …’

The two commercial travellers, both dull-witted men, are rather set on the back foot by such eloquence, not often heard within the walls of the Rising Sun. The storyteller recovers first, and glances down at Sturrock’s cuff, which is dangling over the back of his chair. Sturrock instantly recognises the look, combined with a downwards tilt of the head, a short meditative pause, and then back to Sturrock’s face. The man has just calculated the likelihood of financial gain from selling what information he has to this man–not great, from the state of the cuff, although the East Coast Yankee voice might be good for something. He sighs, but the natural delight in passing on bad news wins out.

‘Near Caulfield?’

‘Yes, I believe he lives on a small farm or something, the place is called something River … a bird or an animal, some such name.’

Sturrock remembers the name perfectly well, but he wants to hear it from them.

‘Dove River.’

‘Yes, that’s it. Dove River.’

The man glances at his companion. ‘This trader. Is he a Frenchie?’

Sturrock feels the coldness of shock clench his spine. The two men see it in his face. Nothing more needs to be said.

‘A Frenchie trader in Dove River was murdered. I don’t know if there’s more than one such there.’

‘I don’t think there is. You didn’t … hear a name by any chance?’

‘Not that I remember off the top of my head–something French, is all I recall.’

‘The name of my acquaintance is Laurent Jammet.’

The man’s eyes light up with pleasure. ‘Well I’m sorry, I truly am, but I think that was the name that was mentioned.’

Sturrock falls uncharacteristically silent. He has had to deal with many shocks in his long career, and his mind is already working out the repercussions of this news. Tragic, obviously, for Jammet. Worrying, at the least, for him. For there is unfinished business there that he has been very keen to conclude, awaiting only the financial means to do so. Now that Jammet is dead, the business must be concluded as soon as possible, otherwise the chance may slip out of his reach for good.

He must have looked very shocked indeed, because the next time he looks down there is a cup of coffee and a chaser of bourbon standing on his table. The commercial travellers are looking at him with great and genuine interest–a violent and dreadful piece of news is exciting enough, but to stumble across someone directly affected by the tragedy–what could be better? It is worth several dinners in cold currency. Sturrock accordingly reaches out with a trembling hand for the liquor.

‘You look like someone walked over your grave all right,’ remarks one of them.

Realising what is required of him, Sturrock hesitatingly tells a sad tale of a present promised to his sick wife, and a debt unpaid. He is not in fact married, but the travellers do not seem to mind. At one point he leans on the table, his eyes following a plate of chops on their way past, and two minutes later a hot roast dinner lands in front of him. Really, he thinks (not for the first time), he missed his vocation–he should have been a writer of romances, the ease with which he conjures the consumptive wife. When at last he feels he has given them their money’s worth (no one could accuse him of not being generous with his imagination), he shakes them both by the hand and leaves the coffeehouse.

It is late afternoon and the day is fleeing over the western horizon. He walks slowly back to his lodgings, his mind working out how he is going to find the cash for a trip to Caulfield, for that is what he will have to do, to keep his dream alive.

There is probably one person left in Toronto whose patience he has not entirely exhausted, and if he approaches her in the right way, she might be good for a loan of twenty dollars or so. Accordingly he turns his footsteps right at the end of Water Street and heads towards the more salubrious districts along the lake shore.

When I could no longer pretend it was night–long after the sun came up–I gave in to exhaustion and climbed upstairs to bed. Now it must be midday but I can’t get up. My body refuses orders, or rather my mind has given up issuing them. I stare at the ceiling, mired in the certainty that all human endeavour, but especially mine, is futile. Francis has not come home, thus adding weight to the argument that I am utterly without talent, courage or use. I am anxious for him, but my concern is overwhelmed by the inability to take a decision to do anything. I am not surprised he has run away from such a mother.

Angus got up just as I was coming upstairs, and not a word was said. We have had difficult conversations about Francis before, although not under such dramatic circumstances. Angus tends to repeat that he is seventeen and can look after himself; it is normal for boys of his age to take off for days on end. But he is not like normal boys, I try not to say, but in the end always do. The unspoken words press on me in the small room: Francis is gone; a man is dead. Of course there can be no connection.

A voice in my head wonders if Angus would not grieve too much if Francis did not come back. Sometimes they look at each other with such venom, like sworn enemies. A week ago Francis came in late and refused to do one of his chores. He would do it in the morning, he said, treading on thin ice as Angus had just had a fruitless argument with James Pretty over the boundary fence. Angus took a breath and told him just what a selfish, ungrateful youth he was. When he said the word ungrateful I knew what was coming. Francis exploded: Angus expected him to be grateful for giving him a home; he treated him as an indentured servant; he hated him and always had … Angus withdrew into himself, betraying nothing but a thin glimmer of contempt that chilled me. I shouted at Francis then, my voice trembling. I wasn’t sure how much he included me in his anger; it was so long since he had looked me in the eye.

How could I have prevented it coming to this? Probably Ann is right to deride me; I am incapable of raising a family, even though I used to despise women who thought it was all that mattered. Not that I have produced anything else of worth.

A sort of waking dream haunted me through my vigil; I had been reading a gothic story about an artificial man who hated the world because his appearance inspired terror and loathing. At the end of the novel the creature ran away to the Arctic where no one could see him. In night-induced delirium I saw Francis being pursued, like the monster, who is a murderer … In daylight I can see how silly this was; Francis can’t even kill a trout. At the same time, he has been gone for two days and nights.

Something occurs to me in the tangle of sheets, and eventually forces me to go into Francis’s room and pick through the chaos. It is hard to tell what is there and what is gone, so it takes me some time to find what I am looking for. When I do, I go into a frenzy, pulling things out of cupboards, scrabbling under the bed and then tearing through the rest of the house in a desperate search. But it is no good–because I am praying for things not to be there when they irrefutably are. I find his two fishing rods and the spare rod Angus made for him when they were still on speaking terms. I find tinder-boxes and sleeping blankets. I find all the things he would have taken on a fishing trip. The only things missing are a set of clothes and his knife. Without thinking I take his favourite fishing rod out the back and break it in two, and bury the halves in the woodpile. When I have done that I am breathing heavily. I feel guilty and dirty, as if I have accused Francis myself, so I go inside and boil pans of water for a bath. Luckily I don’t get into the tub straight away, for Ann Pretty marches into the kitchen without even a knock.

‘Ah, Mrs Ross, what a life of leisure you lead! Bathing in the middle of the day … You ought to be careful with hot baths at your age. My sister-in-law had a seizure in her bath, you know.’

I do know, as she has told me at least twenty times. Ann likes to remind me that she is three years younger than I, as though this were a whole generation. For my part I refrain from pointing out that she looks older than her years and is shaped like a bear, whereas I have kept my figure and was thought, in my youth at least, something of a beauty. She wouldn’t care anyway.

‘Did you hear they are investigating? They have brought in Company men. A whole troop. They are asking questions up and down the river.’

I nod, non-committal.

‘Horace came up from the MacLarens’ and said they’d been there talking to everyone. I expect they’ll be here soon.’ She looks around her in a predatory fashion. ‘He said Francis hasn’t been around since yesterday morn.’

I don’t bother to correct her and say it was longer than that. ‘He’ll get a shock when he comes back,’ I say.

‘Didn’t he hunt with Jammet?’ She looks sly, her eyes raking the room like a bird of prey; a rosy-faced, broad-beamed buzzard, looking for carrion.

‘A few times. He’ll be sad when he finds out. They weren’t great friends, though.’

‘What a business. What are we all coming to? Still, he was a foreigner. They’re hot-blooded, Frenchies, aren’t they? I know when I lived in the Sault they were always at each other’s throats. I expect it was one of them come to do business.’

She is not going to accuse Francis to my face, but I can imagine her doing so elsewhere. She has always thought of him as a foreigner too, with his dark hair and skin. She considers herself a well-travelled woman, and from each place she has been to, she has brought away a prejudice as a souvenir.

‘So when’s he coming back? Aren’t you worried, with a murderer running around?’

‘He’s fishing. Probably not till tomorrow.’

I suddenly want her to leave, and she takes the hint and asks me for a loan of tea–a sign that she thinks there is nothing else to be had from me. I give her the tea more willingly than usual, and add some coffee beans in a fit of generosity which ensures she won’t be back soon, as backwoods etiquette dictates you bring an equal offering with each visit.

‘Well … Best be getting on.’

And yet she still doesn’t go, looking at me with an expression I don’t think I have seen on her face before. It disturbs me somehow.

Hot water has a beneficial effect on me. Bathing is not de rigueur in November, but I see it as a more civilised alternative to the shock baths they used to give us in the asylum. I only experienced the douche twice, in the early days, and although excruciating in anticipation and duration, it left you feeling remarkably calm and clear-headed, even exhilarated. It was a simple device whereby the patient (in this case, me) would be strapped to a wooden chair in a thin cotton shift while a large bucket of cold water was raised above your head. An attendant pulled a lever and the bucket tipped over, drenching you in icy water. That was before Paul–Dr Watson–took over as Superintendent and instigated a gentler regime for the mad, which meant (for the women at least) sewing, flower arranging and all sorts of nonsense. I only agreed to go into the hospital in the first place to get away from that sort of thing.

Thinking about my time in the asylum always cheers me–the advantage, I suppose, of a miserable youth. I must remember to share this pearl of wisdom with Francis when he comes home.

He introduces himself as Mr Mackinley, factor of Fort Edgar. He is a slight man, his thick hair cut short so that it looks, appropriately, like fur. Something about me surprises him–I think my accent, which is more cultured than his and probably seems out of place here. His manner becomes slightly obsequious at this, although I can see him fighting it. All in all, not a happy man. Not that I’ve got anything to shout about.

‘Is your husband in?’ he asks stiffly. As a woman I’m obviously not supposed to know anything.

‘He is out on business. And our son is on a fishing trip. I am Mrs Ross. I found the body.’

‘Ah. I see.’

He’s a fascinating case–one of those rare Scotsmen, whose expression reveals his mind. Assimilating all this information, his face changes yet again, and on top of the surprise and deference and courtesy and mild contempt is a keen interest. I could watch him all day, but he has his job to do. And I have mine.

He gets out a notebook and I tell him that Angus will be back later, but was in the Sault until yesterday afternoon, and Francis left yesterday morning. This is a lie, but I have thought about what to say and no one knows any different. He seems interested in Francis. I say he has gone up to Swallow Lake, but may move on if the fish aren’t biting.

I say they were friendly. He takes notes.

I thought hard about what to say about Francis and Jammet and their friendship. It has occurred to me that Jammet was perhaps his only friend, even though Jammet was so much older, and French. Jammet persuaded Francis to go hunting, something Angus had never managed. There was also that time earlier this summer when I was walking to the Maclaren place and passed his cabin. I heard a violin playing–a bright, infectious sound totally unlike Scottish fiddle music–some French folk tune, I suppose. It was so attractive that I veered towards the cabin in my urge to listen. Then the door burst open and a figure spilled out, limbs flailing, then dashed back inside, in some sort of game. The music, which had stopped, started up again, and I walked on. It had taken me a couple of moments to realise that the figure was Francis. I hardly recognised him, perhaps because he was laughing.

He’s not stupid, this one, despite his revealing face. But perhaps it is all an act–it throws you off the scent. Now, strangely, his expression is quite different–he looks at me almost kindly, as if he has established that I am a poor creature who can be no threat to him. I am not sure what I have done to give him this idea, but it annoys me.

Through the window I watch him walking up the road to the Prettys’ farm and think of Ann. I wonder whether the expression I saw on her face was pity.

Donald quickly learns some facts about Caulfield. For one thing, when he knocks on the door of a house the occupants panic–no one knocks in the normal run of things. When they have established that no members of their immediate family are dead, injured or under arrest, they drag him in to ply him with tea and pump him for information. His notes are a chaos of cross-references: the first family have seen nothing but send for a cousin, who turns out to be the husband of another woman, whom he awaits for an hour before realising he has already met him. People surge in and out of their houses swapping stories, theories and excited, doom-laden prophesies about the state of the country. Trying to make sense of it is like trying to gather the river in his arms.

It is dark by the time he has completed his allotted round of questioning. He waits in the parlour at Knox’s house and tries to draw conclusions from what he has heard. His notes reveal that no one he spoke to saw anything unusual–he discounts the atypical squirrel behaviour seen that morning by George Addamont. Donald hopes that he hasn’t let the others down by missing something obvious. He is tired and has been fed a great deal of tea and, latterly, whisky; has made promises to revisit several households; but he has not, he is fairly certain, met a murderer.

He is wondering how to ask for directions to the bathroom when the door opens and the plainer Knox daughter looks in. Donald immediately stands up and drops some sheets of paper, which Maria hands back to him with a sly smile. Donald blushes, but is thankful that it is Maria and not Susannah who witnesses his clumsiness.

‘Father has roped you in to play detective then?’

Donald immediately feels that she has sensed his insecurity about the afternoon and is making fun of him.

‘Surely someone must attempt to find the villain?’

‘Well of course, I didn’t mean …’ She trails off, looking annoyed. She was only making small talk, he realises, too late. He should have agreed light-heartedly, or made some sort of quip.

‘Do you know when your father is to return?’

‘No.’ She looks at him with that calculating look. ‘I have no way of knowing that.’ Then she smiles, not kindly. ‘Shall I ask Susannah? Perhaps she knows. I’ll go and find her.’

Maria leaves Donald to wonder what he has done to incur such sharpness. He imagines the sisters giggling over his lack of social graces, and feels a surge of affection for his ledgers at the fort, full of neat figures that, with a little manipulation, he can always make come out right. He prides himself on his ability to account for vague items like the cleaning done by the native women, or the food brought in by the hunters, so that they balance the ‘hospitality’ the Company extends to the voyageurs’ families. If only people were as easy to manage.

A polite cough alerts him to Susannah’s presence just before she opens the door.

‘Mr Moody? Oh, you have been quite abandoned; shall I send for some tea?’

She smiles gracefully, so different from her sister, but still has the effect of making him jump to his feet, though this time he holds onto his notes.

‘No, thank you, I have been … Well, yes, perhaps, that would be very … Thank you.’ He tries not to think about the gallons of tea he has drunk.

When the tea has arrived, Susannah sits down to keep him company.

‘This is a terrible business, Miss Knox. I wish we were meeting again under happier circumstances.’

‘I know. It is awful. But the last time was awful too–you were … attacked. Are you quite recovered? It looked dreadful!’

‘Quite recovered, thank you.’ Donald smiles, eager to please with good news, though in fact the scar tissue is soft and tender and often aches.

‘Has the man been punished?’

Donald had not even thought about Jacob being punished. ‘No, he was very contrite and has become my sworn protector. I think that is the Indian way of making amends for a wrong. More useful than punishment, don’t you think?’

Susannah’s eyes widen in surprise, and Donald notices that they are a peculiarly attractive shade of hazel, flecked with gold.

‘Do you trust him?’

Donald laughs. ‘Yes! I think he is quite sincere. He is here now.’

‘Goodness! He looked so frightening.’

‘I think that the real culprit was drink, and he has foresworn it for ever. He is really very gentle–he has two tiny daughters whom he adores. You know, I am helping him with his reading, and he told me he finds reading and writing quite as fascinating as hunting for deer.’

‘Really?’ She laughs too, and then they fall silent.

‘Do you think you will find whoever killed the poor man?’

Donald glances at his notes, which certainly aren’t going to help. But Susannah has a way of looking at him with such warmth and trust that he wishes to solve, not just this murder, but all the wrongs there are.

‘I think someone must have seen a stranger in a place like this–it seems people generally know what everyone is doing.’

‘Yes, they do,’ she says with a grimace.

‘Something as abominable as this … we will not rest until we have brought the man to justice. You shall not have to live in fear.’

‘Oh, I am not afraid.’ Susannah tilts her head defiantly. She leans towards him a little, and lowers her voice. ‘We have lived through tragedy, you know.’

It is such an extraordinary statement that Donald stares, as he was intended to do. ‘Oh, I didn’t know … I’m terribly sorry …’

Susannah looks pleased. As the youngest member of the family it is rare that she gets to be the one to relate the Great Story–everyone in Caulfield knows it already, and strangers are not usually left to her mercy. She draws a breath, revelling in her moment.

‘It was quite a long time ago, and we were very little when it happened so I can’t remember, and it was Mama’s sister you see …’

The door opens so suddenly that Donald is sure Maria must have been listening behind it.

‘Susannah! You can’t tell him that!’ Her face is white and taut with emotion, though from the emphasis of her words it is hard to tell whether she is more upset that Susannah is the teller, or that Donald is the audience. She turns to Donald. ‘You had better come; my father has returned.’

Knox and Mackinley are in the dining room, piles of notes stacked on the table. To Donald’s dismay they both seem to have written far more than him. Donald looks around for Jacob.

‘Where is Jacob? Will he be dining with us?’

‘Jacob is all right. He has been taking care of the, er, body’

‘What was his opinion of the mutilation?’

Mackinley stares at him in mild outrage. ‘I am sure his opinion is the same as ours.’

Knox coughs, to draw them back to the matter in hand, but Donald notices that he has receded somehow, while Mackinley has come forward, assuming the lead in their discussion. He is the one in charge. The Company has taken over.

Each man summarises his findings, which amount to the conclusion that no one saw much at all. A trader by the name of Gros André passed through a few days ago. And a peddler called Daniel Swan, familiar to everyone, was in Caulfield the day before, and has moved on towards St Pierre. Knox has sent a message to the magistrate there. Mackinley found a young boy who saw Francis Ross go to Jammet’s cabin one evening–he can’t remember which one–and now Francis is absent.

‘The mother says she doesn’t know when he’ll be back. I spoke to some of the neighbours about him, and he sounds a queer fish. Keeps himself to himself.’

‘Which doesn’t mean that he did it,’ puts in Knox.

‘We have to look at every possibility. We don’t know whether either of the other two visited Jammet.’

‘Surely the trader would have? He sounds French. You said before that it was probably a disagreement over trade.’

Mackinley turns his eyes on Donald. ‘I propose to follow him, and find out.’

‘Well, shall I follow this Swan fellow?’

Knox shakes his head. ‘That won’t be necessary. I have sent a messenger and he will be detained at St Pierre. I have to go there myself, so I will question him. We were going to suggest that you wait here with Jacob and question the Ross boy on his return.’

Donald is momentarily disappointed, and then, realising what opportunities it affords him, can’t believe his luck.

Mackinley frowns. ‘Perhaps they would do better to follow him. If he has run, there is no point waiting until the trail gets cold.’

‘But where would they look? He may not have gone to Swallow Lake at all. We have only the mother’s word for it. And he’s only a lad. He had no motive, as far as we know. Quite the reverse; it seems they were friends.’

‘We have to keep an open mind.’ Mackinley glares.

‘Of course. But I think Mr Moody would be wasting his time rushing up to this lake.’ He turns to Donald. ‘Perhaps you could wait a day or two, and if he hasn’t returned by then, you can go after him. A day will make no difference to Jacob; the boy is no Indian and he’ll be easy to track.’

Jacob is a Christian, but he still felt a deep unease at the thought of contact with a dead body, and one butchered in this way held a particular kind of uncleanness. He and two paid volunteers, one a midwife practised in laying out, were dispatched to bring the body to Caulfield, and she was the only one not stopped in her tracks by the smell. The midwife merely tutted in valediction, and began to sponge the dried blood away. The body had relaxed, so they straightened him and closed his eyes and placed a coin in his mouth. The midwife tied a cloth round his head to keep his jaw closed and cover up the wounds, and then they wrapped him in sheets, until only the smell remained. The road back to Caulfield was so rough Jacob had to keep a hand on the body to keep it from rolling off the cart.

Now it lay on a table behind hastily rigged curtains in Scott’s dry-goods warehouse, surrounded by crates of cloth and nails. The three of them and Scott’s janitor stood round the table in an impromptu silence before turning away. All of them commented on the weather; how lucky that it was cold.

Donald follows the smell of tobacco to the stables, where Jacob smokes his pipe in a nest of straw, and sits beside him in silence. Jacob fiddles with the tobacco in the bowl. To talk about the dead man will be unlucky, he feels sure. But he knows that this is what Donald wants to do.

‘Tell me what you think.’

Jacob is getting used to Donald’s peculiar questions. He is constantly asking what he thinks of this and that. Of course it is normal to be asked what you think of the weather, or the prospects for hunting, say, or a journey time, but Donald prefers to talk about things that are vague and unimportant, like a story he has just read, or a remark that someone made two days ago. Jacob tries to think what it is that Donald wants to know.

‘You know he was scalped. It was quick, clean. His throat was cut as he lay down, perhaps sleeping.’

‘Could a white man have done it?’

Jacob grins, his teeth gleaming in the lamplight. ‘Any man can do it, if that is what he wants to do.’

‘Did you get a feeling–about who might have done it, or why? You were there.’

‘Who did it? I don’t know. Someone who felt nothing for him. Why did he kill him? Perhaps he had done something a long time ago. Perhaps he hurt someone …’ Jacob pauses, his eyes following the trail of smoke up to the rafters. ‘No. If you want to do that, you want him to be awake, to know you have won.’

Donald nods, encouraging him.

‘Perhaps he was killed for what he was going to do, to stop him. I don’t know. But I think whoever did it has probably done it before.’

Donald tells him about waiting for the Ross boy, and following him if necessary. Mackinley is going after the trader, obviously the most likely suspect, cornering the potential glory of capturing the murderer for himself.

‘Maybe he shouldn’t go alone if this man so tough,’ Jacob grins. ‘Maybe he will do him too.’

He draws his finger across his neck. Donald tries not to smile. Since befriending Jacob he has become aware of Mackinley’s universal unpopularity.

‘Don’t you think it odd that no one has seen any … er, Indians, in the last few days? If it was an Indian who killed him, I mean.’

‘If an Indian doesn’t want to be seen, he won’t be. At least for our people this is true. For others …’ He sniffs disparagingly. ‘Chippewa, I don’t know, maybe they no good trackers.’ He is careful to smile, to show Donald he is joking.

Sometimes Donald feels like a child next to this young man, who is barely older than himself. After he recovered from his wound, he started to help Jacob with his reading and writing, but theirs is not a relationship of teacher and pupil. Donald has a suspicion that the book-learnt knowledge he imparts to Jacob is not really his to give; he just happens to know how to tap into it, whereas when Jacob tells him something, he seems to own it entirely, as if it comes from inside himself. But perhaps Jacob feels the same way; after all the world around him is just a series of signs that he happens to understand, in the same way that Donald can discern the meaning of words on paper without thinking. Donald would like to know what Jacob thinks about this, but cannot imagine how he would begin to ask him.

Maria Knox is observing a phenomenon she has seen many times before: the effect of her sister on a young man. She is used to it, since from the time she was fourteen and her sister twelve boys clustered around Susannah, and altered their behaviour in her presence, becoming gruff and shy or loud and boastful, depending on their nature. Maria they ignored; plain and sarcastic, she was either a playmate or, later, someone to copy homework from. But Susannah was of a peculiarly sunny disposition, and as they got older it became apparent that she was also a beauty. She was never precious; she was adept at most games, and if she was aware of her looks (which of course she was) she was modest, even resentful of the attentions they brought. As members of a family (and of society as well, presumably) carve, or are pushed into, roles for themselves, and then become imprisoned by them, so Susannah became everyone’s darling: spoilt but slightly patronised, in need of protection from unpleasant facts of life like blocked sanitary closets and taxation. Meanwhile Maria became an argumentative bluestocking, reading ferociously through her adolescent years, taking an interest in Expansionism, the war to the South and other subjects generally thought unsuitable for young ladies. For the past three years she has had her own subscriptions to a number of Canadian and foreign journals. She is publicly a Reformer (but secretly favours the Clear Grits), admires Tupper, and argues with her father about his liking for George Brown. All this in a town where reading a newspaper while wearing a dress marks one out as something of a freak. But Maria is aware that the difference between the mental capacities of Susannah and herself is not so very great. If Susannah had been plain and therefore left to her own devices, she was probably just as capable of making herself an intellectual. And she is honest enough to admit that if she herself had been more aesthetically favoured, she would have been lazier in the pursuit of knowledge. It is really such small differences that determine the course of a life.

Every so often Maria brings up the subject of college–she is twenty years old and beginning to feel that if she does not go soon it will become embarrassing. But her family proclaims that she is indispensable, and proves it by involving her in everything that goes on. Her mother consults her about every aspect of the household, claiming that she cannot cope (‘So what did you do when I was a child?’ Maria asks, rhetorically). Her father often discusses his cases with her. As for Susannah, she throws her arms round her and wails that she could not live without her. Of course, it may be that she lacks the courage to make the break from Caulfield. (Perhaps, even, she would not make the grade in the city?) She has wondered about this, but thinking about it too often depresses her, so whenever the possibility occurs, she picks up another newspaper and pushes the thought aside. Besides, if she had gone to college this fall, she would not have been here to support her family during this trying time. Her mother puts on a brave face, but her eyes reveal her worry–on the surface about accommodating two strangers in her house, but deeper down there is a well-hidden terror of the wilderness.

For two days Maria has attempted to get her father alone to ask him about the case, which has been impossible until this evening. She is confident that he will share his thoughts with her, and is keen to discuss her own theories. But after the Company men have gone to bed, his face, never a good colour, is almost grey with fatigue. His eyes are sunken and his nose appears more prominent than ever. She goes and puts her arms round him instead.

‘Don’t worry, Papa, very soon this will be solved and it will become a memory.’

‘I hope so, Mamie.’

She secretly likes being called this–a nickname from her childhood that absolutely no one else is allowed to use.

‘How long are they going to stay?’

‘As long as it takes for them to question everyone they want to question, I suppose. They mean to wait until Francis Ross comes back.’

‘Francis Ross? Really?’ Francis is three years younger than she is and therefore she still thinks of him as a sullen, handsome boy who was much giggled over by the girls in senior school. ‘Well, they don’t need to stay with us. They could go to the Scotts’. I’m sure the Company can afford it.’

‘I’m sure it can. How are your mother and Susannah coping with it all?’

Maria pauses to give this serious thought. ‘Mama would be happier without the guests.’

‘Mm.’

‘And Susannah is fine. It’s an exciting diversion from the usual run of things. Although I found her today on the point of telling Mr Moody about our cousins and I almost lost my temper. I’m not sure why. It’s none of his business, is it?’ After a pause she adds, though slightly ashamed of it, ‘I think she was trying to impress him. Not that she needs to try.’

Her father smiles. ‘I expect she was. It’s not often that she gets looked up to.’

Maria laughs shortly. ‘What are you saying? She is nothing but looked up to, as far as I can tell.’

‘Admired in one sense, yes. But not regarded in the way people regard you, Mamie, with a certain awe.’

He gives her a look. Maria smiles, feeling a blush flare over her cheeks. She likes the thought of being regarded with awe.

‘I didn’t mean to flatter you.’

‘Don’t worry, I am not at all flattered by being compared to Niagara Falls or the Heights of Abraham.’

‘Well, just as long as you’re not …’

Maria watches her father climb the stairs–stiffly, which means he is suffering with his joints. It is awful to watch your parents age and know that pains and frailties are only going to accumulate in the body, building up until it fails completely. Maria has already developed a rather cynical outlook on life, probably another by-product of having a beautiful sister. Who has cast her usual, entirely thoughtless spell over Mr Moody.

Not that Maria is at all interested in him for herself. Not at all. But, just occasionally, it would be nice to think that she stood a chance.

It is becoming clear to me that I am going to have to do something. After Mackinley leaves I pace the kitchen until Angus returns, and I don’t have to tell him that Francis has still not come back. I tell him the fishing rods are all here, and that I hid one. Now he too looks uneasy.

‘You must go and look for him.’

‘It’s been less than three days. He’s not a child.’

‘He could have had an accident. It’s cold. He hasn’t taken any blankets.’

Angus thinks, then says he will go up to Swallow Lake tomorrow. I am so relieved I go and embrace him, only to meet with a stiff and unyielding response. He simply waits for me to detach myself, and then turns away as though nothing has happened.

Our marriage seemed to work as long as I didn’t think about it. Now, I don’t know, the more I worry about other people the less they seem to like it. When I thought of nothing but myself I only had to snap my fingers and men did whatever I wanted. Then I try to become a better person and look where it’s got me: my own husband turning away and refusing to meet my eyes. Or maybe it is none of those things, and is simply to do with age–as a woman gets older she loses the ability to charm and persuade, and there is nothing that can be done about it.

‘I could come with you.’

‘Don’t be silly.’

‘I can’t stand this waiting. What if something’s … happened?’

Angus sighs, his shoulders hunched like an old man’s. ‘Rhu …’ he breathes out the old endearment, which causes a small tremor inside me. ‘I’m sure he is all right. He will be back soon.’

I nod, touched by the endearment. In fact, I seize at it like a lifebelt–although, I think afterwards, if I am really still his ‘rhu’, his dear, why does he not look at me when he says it?

As the light fades, I go for a walk, skirt pockets bulging. At least that is what I tell Angus; whether he believes me is anyone’s guess. At this time of day everyone in Dove River sits down to eat, as predictable as a herd of cattle, so no one will be outside or anywhere they shouldn’t be. Nobody but me.

I thought about this most of the day, and decided that evening was the best time. I could have waited till dawn, but I don’t want to leave it any longer. The river is fast and high–there have been rains to the north. But the rock from where Doc Wade took his leave is dry–it is only the spring floods that cover it.

And yet there is a footprint on it. A dark, wet mark. Even in the dusk I see it. Perhaps Knox has arranged for a guardian after all. Who got bored and went for a paddle. I don’t believe it for a minute, so I creep softly down the side of the cabin, out of sight of the front door. All is silent. Perhaps I imagined it–I can no longer see the rock. I have brought a knife in my pocket, which I am now holding, rather more tightly than is necessary. It’s not really that I think for a moment the murderer would come back–for what?–but I creep on, one hand on the cabin wall, until I can listen by the window for sounds within. I stand there so long my leg goes to sleep, and I have not heard so much as a fly’s breath. I step up to the door, which is wired shut, take out the pliers and unpick the fastening. Inside is dim but I still pull the door closed, just in case.

The cabin looks exactly as I remember it, except that the bed is now empty. There is still an awful smell coming from the mattress and blankets, stacked up against the wall. I wonder who is going to wash them–or will they simply be burnt? His old mother is hardly likely to want them.

I start upstairs. It doesn’t look as though Jammet came up here very much–there are boxes and crates stacked against the walls, and dust blankets everything, showing where the men went yesterday, their feet rubbing little clearings where they stopped and peered at something. I put down the lamp and start to go through the nearest box, which contains his best clothes–an old-fashioned black coat and trousers, which I would say were too small for him. Did they belong to him when younger, or to his father? I sift through the other boxes; more clothes, some papers from the Hudson Bay Company, mainly relating to his retirement after ‘an accident incurred in the line of duty’.

Several items open doors that lead to Jammet’s other lives, before he came to Dove River. I try not to think about some of them too much: a pressed silk flower, for instance, faded with age–a token of love from a woman, or one he meant to give but didn’t? I wonder about the invisible women in his life. And here is a rare thing–a photograph that shows Jammet as a younger man, grinning his infectious smile. He is with several men I take to be voyageurs, all wearing neckerchiefs and capotes and squinting to varying degrees in the bright sunlight, clustered around a mountain of boxes and canoes, but he is the only one who could keep up a smile for that long. What occasion could have merited a photograph? Perhaps they had just beaten the record for a particularly gruelling portage. Voyageurs take pride in such things.

Having searched the boxes I pull them away from the wall. I am not sure what I think I might find but there is nothing other than dust and mouse droppings; the desiccated husks of wasps.

I go downstairs disheartened. I don’t even know what I am looking for, other than something that will confirm that Francis is nothing to do with this, which of course I already know. I cannot imagine what that might be.

I become aware that I am breathing thickly through my mouth as I go through his foodstuffs. The smell inhabits the whole building, worse than when he was still here. For the sake of thoroughness, so I will not be tormented in the night and have to come back, I stick my hand into the bins of grain and flour, and that’s when I find it. In the flour bin my hand brushes against something and I jerk backwards with a sort of yelp before I can stop myself, throwing flour everywhere. It’s a slip of paper torn from a larger piece, with numbers and letters written on it: ‘61HBKW’. Nothing else. I can’t really imagine anything less useful. Why hide a piece of paper in a flour bin if it has nonsensical letters on it, particularly if, like Jammet, you can’t read? I put it in my pocket before it occurs to me that it could have fallen into the flour bin by accident. Come to that, it could have fallen into the flour anywhere; in Scott’s warehouse, for instance. Even if Jammet did hide it, it seems hardly likely to give me the identity of his killer.

I have so far avoided the area round the bed, and am unwilling, to say the least, to put my hands on it. I should have brought gloves, but that is one thing I did not think of. I peer round inside the empty firebox while I think about it. Then something happens that very nearly causes me to faint from shock: there is a knock at the door.

I stand stock still for several seconds, but it is foolish to pretend I am not here, what with the lantern shining through the translucent windows. I stand for several more seconds, while I try to concoct a good reason for being there, but I still haven’t thought of one when the door opens and I am confronted with a man I have never seen before.

Shortly after he emerged from the bright fog of childhood, Donald had to acknowledge that he had difficulty seeing objects at any distance. Anything beyond the range of his outstretched hand became indistinct; small objects escaped him; people became anonymous. He could no longer recognise friends, or even his own family, and he stopped hailing people at a distance, as he had no idea who they were. He developed a reputation for coldness. He confided his unease to his mother and was provided with a pair of uncomfortable wire-framed spectacles. This was the first miracle of his life–the way the spectacles brought him back into the world.

The second, related miracle occurred one evening soon after. It was November, a rare clear night, and he was walking home from school when he looked up and stopped dead in astonishment. The full moon hung low and heavy in front of him, casting his shadow along the road. But what made his jaw drop was its clarity. He had assumed (without ever thinking about it much) that the moon was a fuzzy disc to everyone. How could it be otherwise, when it was so far away? But here it was, in sharp, exquisite detail–the wrinkled, pocked surface, the bright plains and dark craters. His new, augmented vision reached not just to the far side of the street and the hymn board in church, but countless leagues into space. Breathless, he took the glasses off–the moon was softer, larger, somehow nearer. His surroundings closed in, appearing both more intimate and more threatening. He put the glasses back on and distance, clarity, was restored.

That night he walked home filled with a huge, brimming delight. He laughed out loud, to the surprise of passers-by. He wanted to shout to them and tell them of his discovery. He knew it would mean nothing to them, they who had seen it all along. But he felt sorry for them, not to know what it was to appreciate a gift like eyesight, having lost it, and been granted it again.

How often, since then, has he felt that perfect, overwhelming delight? In truth, not once.

Donald lies in the narrow, uncomfortable bed staring at the moon over Caulfield. He takes his spectacles off and puts them on again, reliving that ecstatic moment of revelation. He remembers being sure he had been afforded a glimpse of something portentous, although not certain what it meant. Now it doesn’t seem that it meant anything much. But he became accustomed to looking at things from a distance, in order to keep them in focus. Perhaps that is why he gravitated towards numbers, attracted by their mute simplicity. Numbers are only ever themselves. If things can be reduced to numbers, they can be ordered and balanced. Take the community of native families that live beyond the palisade of Fort Edgar, and cause constant headaches to the factors. The voyageurs breed at an alarming rate, producing ever more mouths for the Company to feed. There has been much grumbling about the food they consume and the medical attention they demand, so Donald set to enumerating the work that the women do for the Fort. He listed the washing and vegetable tending, the tanning of hides, the making of snowshoes … and attributed a value to each task, until he could show that the Company was benefiting at least as much from the association as the families were. He was proud of this achievement, even more so since getting to know Jacob’s wife and children–two girls who stare at their father’s pale friend with huge, liquid brown eyes. These children with their trusting gaze and incomprehensible secret names are set against the furs that the Company lives on, although to be honest, no one is in any doubt which are more important.

When Donald first arrived at Fort Edgar, the Clerk-in-depot, a man called Bell, had shown him round the post. Donald saw the offices, the crowded sleeping quarters, the trading counter, the Indian village beyond the palisade (at a suitable distance), the log church, the graveyard … and finally the huge cold storerooms where the furs were stacked, waiting to start on their epic journey to London, where they would be converted into hard cash. Bell glanced furtively around him before breaking open a bale, and the glossy pelts slithered out onto the dirt floor.

‘Well, this is what it’s all about,’ he said in his Edinburgh accent. ‘This lot will be worth several guineas in London. Let’s see …’ He stirred the pelts with his hand. ‘Here’s a marten. You can see why we don’t want them to shoot the beasties–the traps barely leave a mark, look!’

He waved the flattened leg of a weasel-like animal at Donald. The head was still attached to it–a small, pointed face with its eyes squeezed shut, as though it couldn’t bear to remember what had happened to it.

He laid the marten down and plunged his hand back into the skins, offering them to Donald in quick succession, like a magician. ‘These are the least valuable; beaver, wolf, and bear, though they are useful enough–good wrappings for the other furs. Feel how coarse it is …’

The glossy pelts rippled under his hands, vestigial legs folding under them. Donald took the pelts as he was handed them and was surprised at their touch. He had felt rather disgusted at this vast warehouse of death, but as he pushed his hands into the cool, silky luxuriance, he experienced an urge to put the soft fur to his lips. He resisted, of course, but understood how a woman could want such a thing draped round her neck, where she could, with just a small tilt of the head, brush the fur against her cheek.

Bell was still talking, almost to himself. ‘But the most valuable … ah, this is silver fox–this is worth more than its weight in gold.’ His eyes shone in the dirty light.

Donald reached out a hand to touch, and Bell almost flinched. The fur was grey and white and black, blended together into a silvery sheen, thick and soft, with a heavy, watery flow. He withdrew his hand, as Bell seemed unable to let go of it.

‘The only one more valuable is black fox–that comes from the far north too, but you hardly see one from one year’s end to the next. That would cost you a hundred guineas in London.’

Donald shook his head in wonder. As Bell started to press the furs into a wooden packing mould, tenderly laying the silver fox in the middle, Donald felt uncomfortable, as if, despite Bell’s best efforts to hide it, he was in the presence of some secretive act of pleasure.

Donald wrenches his mind back to the present. He wants to think about his conversation with Jacob, to balance the facts until he comes up with a brilliant solution that makes everything come out right, but there aren’t enough facts. A man is dead but no one knows why, let alone who did it. If they could trace Jammet’s life back from its end point, if they could know everything about him, would it lead to the truth? It is, he feels, an idle thought; he cannot imagine the Company committing the men and the time to find out. Not for a free trader.

His mind turns again towards Susannah. He had sat with her in the parlour for several minutes without any awkward silences, and she seemed to find him interesting; she wanted to tell him things, and to hear what he had to say. He was too anxious to feel delight, but there was something like happiness there, unfurling like buds after a Canadian winter. He folds his spectacles and puts them, for want of a bedside table, on the floor beside him, where, he hopes, he won’t stand on them in the morning.

After the initial shock, I realise I am not in imminent danger. The man in the doorway is at least sixty years old, his bearing is bookish, and, most importantly, he isn’t armed. He looks distinguished more than anything, with smooth white hair brushed off a high forehead, a thin face and aquiline nose. His expression strikes me as kind. In fact, for a man of his age, he is (the word surprises me but it is right) beautiful.

I have got into the reprehensible habit, common here where accent is no longer a reliable guide, of checking off a list of items in a stranger. Whenever I encounter someone new I glance at cuffs, shoes, fingernails and so on, to establish station in life and financial security. This man is dressed in a flamboyant coat that is well cut but has seen better days, and though he is neat and clean-shaven, his shoes are disgracefully worn. In the moment it takes to reach these conclusions, I notice he has been taking much the same sort of inventory of me, and so presumably has concluded that I am the wife of a reasonably prosperous farmer. Whether he goes any further and decides that I am a faded and probably bitter former beauty, I really could not say.

‘Excuse me …’ His voice is pleasant, with a Yankee twang. My heart slows its frantic hammering.

‘You gave me a shock,’ I say severely, aware that there is flour on my dress and probably in my hair. ‘Are you looking for Mr Jammet?’

‘No. I heard …’ He gestures towards the bed and bloody blankets. ‘A terrible thing … a terrible waste. Excuse me, ma’am, I don’t know your name.’

He smiles gravely and I find myself warming to him. I do appreciate nice manners, especially when someone is questioning my presence at a scene of crime.

‘I am Mrs Ross. His neighbour. I came to sort out his things.’ I smile regretfully, indicating the unpleasantness of the task. Is it my imagination, or has he quickened at the mention of Jammet’s things?

‘Ah, Mrs Ross, I apologise for disturbing you. My name is Thomas Sturrock, from Toronto. Lawyer.’

He extends his hand, and I take it. He bows his head.

‘You are here to see to his estate?’ Lawyers, in my experience, don’t turn up on their own, snooping around after dark, getting their hands dirty. Nor do they tend to have frayed cuffs and holes in their shoes.

‘No, I’m not here on business.’

Honest. Not a typical lawyer at all.

‘It is a personal matter. I’m not sure who I should apply to in this, but, you see, the fact is, Monsieur Jammet had an object which is of some importance to my research. He was going to send it to me.’

He pauses, assessing my reaction, which is one of bemusement. Having searched the cabin from top to bottom I can think of nothing that could be of any interest to anyone, especially a man like this. If Jammet had had such a thing, I assume he would have sold it.

‘It’s not something of value,’ he adds, ‘just of academic interest.’

I continue to say nothing.

‘I suppose I must place myself in your hands,’ he says with a diffident smile. ‘You can have no way of knowing whether what I say is true, so I will tell you everything. Monsieur Jammet had acquired a piece of bone or ivory, about so big …’ He indicates the palm of his hand. ‘With markings on it. It may be that this object is of archaeological significance.’

‘You said you were a lawyer …?’

‘A lawyer by profession. An archaeologist by inclination.’

He spreads his hands wide. I’m puzzled, but he seems sincere. ‘I must admit, I did not know him particularly well, though I am sorry for his death. I believe that it was … sudden.’

I suppose sudden is one way of putting it.

‘It must seem rather grasping of me to come for this object so soon after his death, but I really think it could be important. It is nothing to look at, and it would be a terrible pity if it were thrown away out of ignorance. So there you are–that is why I am here.’

He has a way of looking at me that I find disarming–open and rather unsure of himself. Even if he is lying, I can’t think what harm he could mean.

‘Well Mr Sturrock,’ I begin, ‘I haven’t …’

I break off suddenly, for I hear something else–a rattle of pebbles on the path behind the cabin. Instantly I seize the lantern from the stove.

‘Mr Sturrock, I will help you, if you will help me and do as I say. Go outside and hide yourself in the bushes by the river. Say nothing. If you do this, and are not discovered, I will tell you what I know.’

His mouth opens in amazement, but he moves with impressive speed for a man his age: he is out the door the second I finish speaking. I blow out the lantern and pull the door to, giving the wire a twist to hold it closed before slipping into the bushes of Jammet’s overgrown garden. I silently thank Jammet for his lack of horticultural pride; the place could hide a dozen of us.

I try to melt into the bushes, aware that one of my feet is sinking into something soft and wet. The footsteps come closer, and a lantern light, swinging in the hand of a dark figure.

To my eternal shock, it is my husband.

He holds up the lantern, opens the door and goes inside. I wait for an appreciable time, getting colder by the moment, my shoe soaking up water, wondering when Sturrock is going to get fed up and reappear to talk to the newcomer instead of the insane woman. Then Angus comes out again, fixing the door behind him. He barely looks around before disappearing up the path, and soon even his light is hidden from view.

It is now quite dark. I stand up stiffly, my joints cracking, and pull my foot out of the soft muck. The stocking is soaked. I find matches and manage with difficulty to relight the lamp.

‘Mr Sturrock,’ I call, and a few moments later he comes into the circle of my lantern, brushing leaves off his shabby coat.

‘Well, that was rather an adventure.’ He smiles at me. ‘Who was the gentleman from whom we had to hide?’

‘I don’t know. It was too dark to see. Mr Sturrock, I apologise for my behaviour, you must think me very peculiar. I am going to be frank, as you have been with me, and perhaps we can help each other.’

I unfasten the door as I speak, and the smell hits me afresh. If Sturrock notices, he does a good job of hiding it.

Most men, when their wives disappear at twilight and come back after dark with a male stranger, would not be as gracious as Angus is. It is one of the reasons I married him. In the beginning it was because he trusted me: now, I don’t know, perhaps he no longer believes me capable of arousing impure feelings, or simply no longer cares. Total strangers are rare in Dove River; usually they are cause for celebration, but Angus just looks up and nods calmly. Then again, perhaps he saw him at the cabin.

Sturrock talks little about himself, but as we eat I form a picture. A picture of a man with holes in his shoes and a taste for fine tobacco. A man who eats pork and potatoes as if he hadn’t seen a decent meal in a week. A man of delicacy and intelligence, and disappointment, perhaps. And something else–ambition. For he wants that little piece of bone, whatever it is, very much.

We tell him about Francis. Children do get lost in the bush. It has been known. We discuss, inevitably, the Seton girls. Like everyone else above the Border, he knows of them. Sturrock points out the differences between the Seton girls and Francis, and I agree that Francis is not a defenceless young girl, but I have to say it’s not exactly reassuring.

Sometimes, you find yourself looking at the forest in a different way. Sometimes it’s no more than the trees that provide houses and warmth, and hide the earth’s nakedness, and you’re glad of it. And then sometimes, like tonight, it is a vast dark presence that you can never see the end of; it might, for all you know, have not just length and breadth to lose yourself in, but also an immeasurable depth, or something else altogether.

And sometimes, you find yourself looking at your husband and wondering: is he the straightforward man you think you know–provider, friend, teller of poor jokes that nonetheless make you smile–or does he too have depths that you have never seen? What might he not be capable of?

During the night, the temperature plummets. A light dusting of snow greets Donald when he rubs frost off the inside of his window and looks outside. He wonders if Jacob spent the night in the stables. Jacob is used to the cold. Last winter–Donald’s first in the country–was relatively mild, but still a shock to him. This bone-aching morning is just a foretaste.

Knox has arranged for a local man to accompany Mackinley on his pursuit of the Frenchman. Someone sufficiently lowly that Mackinley will not have to share the glory with him … Then Donald dismisses the thought as uncharitable. More and more of his thoughts seem to be uncharitable nowadays. This is not what he had expected before he left Scotland–the great lone land had seemed like a promise of purity, where the harsh climate and simple life would hone a man’s courage and scour off petty faults. But it isn’t like that at all–or perhaps it is he who is at fault, and isn’t up to the scouring. Perhaps he didn’t have enough moral fibre in the first place.

After Mackinley has gone, terse and prickly to the last, Donald lingers over his coffee in the hope of seeing Susannah. Of course it is also a pleasure to sit at a table covered with white linen and look at the paintings on the wall, to be served by a white woman–albeit a rough Irish one–and to stare pensively into the fire without crude jokes being aimed in his direction. Finally his patience is rewarded, and both girls come in and take their seats.

‘Well Mr Moody,’ Maria says, ‘so you are guarding our safety while the others pursue the suspects.’

It is extraordinary how in one sentence Maria can make him feel like a coward. He tries not to sound defensive. ‘We are waiting for Francis Ross. If he doesn’t return today then we will go after him.’

‘You don’t think he could have done it?’ Susannah frowns at him charmingly.

‘I know nothing about him. What do you think?’

‘I think he’s a seventeen-year-old boy. A rather good-looking one.’ With this, Maria looks slyly at him.

‘He’s sweet,’ Susannah says, looking at the table. ‘Shy. He doesn’t have many friends.’

Maria snorts sarcastically. Donald thinks that it would be hard for any youth to appear other than shy and awkward in the face of Maria’s acidity and Susannah’s beauty.

Maria adds, ‘We don’t know him that well. I don’t know who does. It’s just that he always seems rather a sissy. He doesn’t hunt or do the things most of the boys do.’

‘What do the other boys do?’ Donald tries to assume a great distance between now and his seventeen-year-old self, when he did not hunt and would undoubtedly have been called a sissy by these young women.

‘Oh, you know, they go round together, play practical jokes, get drunk … Stupid things like that.’

‘You think someone who doesn’t do those things couldn’t commit murder?’

‘No …’ Maria looks reflective for a moment. ‘He always seems moody and … well, as though there are things going on under the surface.’

‘There was once, I remember, at school,’ Susannah says, her face brightening. ‘He was about fourteen, I think, and another boy, was it George Pretty …? No, no, it was Matthew Fox. Or …’ She trails off, frowning. Her sister gives her a look.

‘Well Matthew, or whoever, tried to crib his task, and was showing off about it, you know, making sure his friends saw … and suddenly Francis realised and went into the most frightful rage. I’d never seen anyone’s face go white with anger before, but he did–he went paper-white, and his skin is normally sort of golden, you know …? Um, anyway, he started hitting Matthew as if he wanted to kill him. He was in a sort of frenzy; he had to be dragged off by Mr Clarke and another boy. It was quite frightening.’

She looks at Donald, hazel eyes wide. ‘I hadn’t thought of that for ages. Do you suppose …?’

‘It wasn’t a frenzied attack, was it Mr Moody?’ Maria has remained calm while Susannah worked herself up into a state of excitement.

‘We can’t rule anything out.’

‘Mr Mackinley thinks it was the French trader, doesn’t he? That’s why he’s gone after him. Or perhaps he just wants it to be the French trader. You don’t like free traders do you, Mr Moody, in the Company?’

‘The Company tries to protect its interests, of course, but it is generally of benefit if trappers can get a fixed price for their skins; and the Company looks after a lot of people–the trappers know where to go and the situation is … stable. Where there is competition, prices go up or down, and the free traders don’t look after their families. It is the difference between … order and anarchy.’ Donald hears the patronising tone in his voice and winces inwardly.

‘But if a free trader offers a higher price for a fur than the Company, surely a trapper is entitled to take it? Then he can look after his family himself.’

‘Of course, he is free to do so. But then he must take the risk that that trader will not be there the next year–he cannot rely on him in the way he can rely on the Company.’

‘But isn’t it true,’ she persists, ‘that the Company encourages the Indians they trade with to become dependent on liquor, and makes sure that it is the only supplier of liquor, so that they always come back?’

Donald feels a warm flush rising above his collar. ‘The Company does not encourage anything of the sort. The trappers do what they want, they are not coerced into anything.’

He sounds quite angry. Susannah turns on her sister. ‘That is a horrible accusation. Besides, it is hardly Mr Moody’s fault if things like that go on.’

Maria shrugs, unconvinced.

Donald walks outside, letting the air cool his face. He will have to try and find Susannah alone later–it is impossible to have a conversation with the rebarbative Maria around. He lights his pipe to calm himself, and finds Jacob in the stables, talking to his horse in the nonsense language he uses with them.

‘Morning Mr Moody.’

‘Good morning. Did you sleep well?’

Jacob looks puzzled, as he usually is by this question. He slept–what else is there to say? He also lay awake, thinking about the dead man and the warrior’s death he met at home, on his bed. He nods, though, to humour Donald.

‘Jacob, do you like working for the Company?’

Another bizarre question. ‘Yes.’

‘You wouldn’t prefer to work for someone else–like a free trader?’

Jacob shrugs. ‘Not now–with my family. When I am away, I know they are safe and won’t starve. And Company goods are cheap–much cheaper than outside.’

‘So it’s good that you work for the Company?’

‘I guess so. Why, you want to leave?’

Donald laughs and shakes his head, and then wonders why this has never occurred to him. Because there is nowhere else for him to go? Perhaps there is nowhere for Jacob either–his father was a Company man, a voyageur, and Jacob started working when he was fourteen. His father died young. He wonders now if he was involved in an accident, but as with so many other aspects of Jacob’s life, he cannot think of an appropriate time to ask.

The reason Donald became so agitated was because Maria was right to say the Company jealously guards its monopoly–but it has good reason to fear competition. Tired of its centuries of supremacy in the wilderness, a number of independent fur traders–mainly French and Yankee–are attempting to break the Company’s hold on the fur trade. There have been rival outfits in the past, but the Company subsumed or quashed them all. But this new alliance, the one known as the North America Company, has the mandarins worried. There are deep pockets behind it, and a disregard for the rules (rules laid down by the Company, that is). Traders offer trappers high prices for furs and extract promises that they will avoid the Company in future. It is likely that bribery and threats are being used–more than probable in fact, since the Company uses them itself. Trade, and consequently profits, are suffering.

Mackinley has had several terse discussions with Donald on the devious nature of free traders, and the necessity of binding the natives to the Company with liquor, guns and food. That was what brought the blood to Donald’s cheeks–Maria’s accusation was quite accurate. But it is no worse than the Yankees do, for heaven’s sake. He should have told Maria about the Indian village that depends on the Fort for food and protection. He should have told her about Jacob’s wife and the two little girls with trusting eyes, but, as usual, he did not think of these things at the right moment.

It was during one of these conversations with Mackinley that something occurred to Donald: perhaps the problem of falling profits stemmed from a more fundamental source than Yankee greed. The trapping has gone on for over two hundred years, and it has taken its toll. When the Company set up the first trading posts, the animals were neighbourly and trusting, but the quest for profit thrust a murderous desire deep into the wilderness, driving the animals before it. Since that day in the depot with Bell, Donald has not seen another silver fox; has never seen a black fox. None have arrived there.

Donald spurs on his pony to catch up with Jacob. They are riding through a stretch of woodland where the last leaves have turned even brighter colours, with the rime of frost on the leaf-fall. If Susannah does not concern herself with the Company’s methods, why should he? After all, when it comes down to it, the fact remains that order is better than anarchy. That is what he has to remember.

They leave the ponies grazing on the riverbank as they walk up to the cabin. Donald is relieved to think that it is empty now. He managed not to embarrass himself when confronted with the body, but it was not an experience he is in a hurry to repeat. In the patch of weeds that surrounds the house Jacob stops and studies the ground. Even Donald can see the muddled footprints.

‘These are from last night. Look, someone hid here.’ Jacob indicates the ground under a bush.

‘Maybe village boys?’

There seem to be several different sets of footprints. Jacob points them out.

‘Look, here … a man’s boot, and under it, another, but a different shape–so there were two men. The man with the larger foot was here first. But the last person to leave the house was this one–smaller still, perhaps a boy … or a woman.’

‘A woman? Are you sure these aren’t the prints from yesterday? That could be the laying-out woman?’

Jacob shakes his head.

Donald is triumphant when he discovers the loose floorboard with the hollowed-out space underneath, but it is Jacob who finds the cache under some rocks. The mystery of Jammet’s missing wealth is solved–in a lead-lined case are three American rifles, some gold and a packet of dollars wrapped in oiled cotton. Jacob lets out a cry of astonishment when he sees them. Donald ponders what to do with it, and decides to rebury it until they can come back with a cart. They replace the stones and Jacob scatters fallen leaves on the smoothed earth to make the spot look undisturbed. Donald looks at Jacob as he gets out his pipe. A flicker of mistrust crosses his mind and he chides himself for thinking that Jacob might be tempted by what is in the case, which is more than he could earn in ten years. Donald is aware that he cannot read Jacob’s face as he believes he could another white man’s. He hopes that Jacob finds his own visage as opaque, and so does not see his lack of faith.

Ann Pretty is surprised to see me so soon after the loan of the coffee, and her expression becomes guarded, although for once I have not come to reclaim my possessions. Ida is sitting by the stove, sulkily turning sheets. She looks up with a pale, haunted face. She is fifteen and I find her interesting, perhaps because she is the age Olivia would have been now. Also because she fits into the Pretty family like a crow in a chicken run–she is skinny, dark and introverted, and rumoured to be clever. She has recently been crying.

‘Mrs Ross!’ Ann bellows from three feet away. ‘Have you had any news of your boy?’

‘Angus has gone to look for him.’

Now I’m here I’m not sure I can keep up the appearance of light-hearted unconcern. And if Angus won’t talk to me, who else can I turn to?

‘Ah, children are such a cross.’ She shoots a harsh glance at the silent Ida. Ida keeps her head bowed to the sheet, sewing with small, tight stitches.

‘He was in such a mood when he left, I didn’t ask where he was going. And when he comes back, he’ll be upset about Jammet. Whatever else you can say about him, he was a kind man. He was good to Francis.’

‘What a time. God knows what we’re all coming to.’

Ida lets out the smallest of sighs. Her head is bent so I cannot see her face, but she is weeping again. Ann sighs too, sharply.

‘My girl, I don’t know what you’re crying about. It’s not as though you knew him to speak of.’

Ida sniffs and says nothing. Ann turns to me, shaking her head.

‘It’s his mother I feel for. She’s got no one else, from what I hear. You know he was in Chicago only two months ago? What does a man like him go to Chicago for, I ask you?’

‘I wish they’d go to Chicago and stop bothering about Francis, it’s absurd to keep on after him.’

‘It is that.’

Ida makes another small noise–and now her shoulders are trembling.

‘Ida, will you give over? Go upstairs if you can’t sit there without snivelling. My Lord …’

Ida gets up and goes without a look at us.

‘She’ll drive me crazy, that one. You should be glad you don’t have girls …’ Just as it comes out of her mouth she remembers Olivia, and I believe it crosses her mind to apologise, before she banishes such a silly notion from her head. ‘But you’ve had your trials with that one.’

I acknowledge this to be true.

‘It’s the blood in them, coming out. You can’t help it. You never knew his parents, did you? Who’s to know they weren’t thieves and tinkers? That’s the Irish in him. They can’t be trusted. When I was in Kitchener, we had a crowd of Irish, steal the clothes off your back soon as look at you. Not that I’m saying that about your Francis, mind, but it’s in them. It’s in them and you’ve got to watch for it.’

Despite the insults, I know she is trying to be kind; she just has no other way of showing it.

‘What’s the matter with Ida, then? You shouldn’t be too hard on her, you remember what it’s like when you’re that age.’

Ann snorts. ‘I was never that age. I was keeping house from the age of ten, didn’t have the time to sit and moon about.’ She shoots me a look, the slyly humourous one that’s usually followed by a joke at my expense. ‘You know what I think? I think she’s sweet on your Francis. She won’t say so, but I reckon I know.’

I’m so surprised I nearly laugh out loud. ‘Ida?’ It’s hard to think of her as anything other than a skinny child. And I never thought any of the Pretty family had much time for Francis. There had been a disastrous camping trip that Angus and Jimmy had bullied the boys into, when Francis had gone off with George and Emlyn. They came back after two days and Francis never said a word about it. I gave up urging him to go and play with them after that.

‘They were tight at school, before he left.’

‘Let me go and talk to her. I know what I was like at that age. You know, I’ve always thought that she reminds me of myself when I was young.’ I smile at Ann, enjoying the thought that the prospect of her daughter turning out like me is probably her worst nightmare.

I follow the sound of sniffing to find Ida in her tiny bedroom, staring out of the window. At least, I’m sure she was staring out of the window, although she is bent over the sheet when I look in.

‘Your mother says you’re enjoying school at the moment.’

Ida looks up with reddened eyes and a mutinous mouth. ‘Enjoy it? Not hardly.’

‘Francis is always saying how clever you are.’

‘Really?’ Her face softens for a moment. So perhaps Ann was right.

‘Said you were quite the scholar. Maybe you could go on to the school at Coppermine–have you thought of that?’

‘Mm. Don’t know that Ma and Pa would let me.’

‘Well they’ve got enough boys to look after the place, haven’t they?’

‘I guess.’

I smile at her, and she almost smiles back. She has a peaky little bony face with smudges under the eyes. No one will ever accuse her of being beautiful.

‘Mrs Ross? Did you go on with your schooling?’

‘Yes I did. It’s well worth doing.’

It’s almost true. I certainly might have done, if I hadn’t been in an asylum at the time. Now she’s looking at me with a shy sort of admiration and I am filled with a desire to be what she thinks I am. Maybe I could be a sort of mentor to her–I’ve never thought like this before, but it’s a pleasing thought. Perhaps it is one of the compensations of getting older.

‘Francis should go on with school. He’s really smart.’ She blushes with the unaccustomed effort of expressing a personal opinion.

‘Well, maybe. He won’t talk to me at the moment. You’ll find out: when you’re someone’s mother they don’t listen to you.’

‘I’m not going to get married. Ever.’

Her face has changed again–the dark shadow is back.

‘Do you know, I can remember saying the same thing? But things don’t always turn out the way you think.’

For some reason I am losing her. The tears well up in her eyes.

‘Ida … I don’t suppose Francis talked to you before he went on this trip? About where he was going, or anything like that?’

The girl shakes her head. When she lifts her face again I am stunned by the raw pain in her eyes. Sorrow and something else–is it anger? Something about Francis.

‘No, he didn’t.’

I go home feeling worse than when I started. I don’t really expect Angus to come back with Francis, and when, long after dark, he arrives home alone, I feel no surprise. His skin is slack with weariness and he talks without looking at me.

‘I got to Swallow Lake. Saw traces of someone going–more than one person, clear as day. But he’s not there. And no one fished there, I’d swear to it. Went straight through. If that was Francis, he was running.’

And you came back, I think to myself. You turned your back and walked away. I stand up. I’ve already decided; I don’t have to think any more.

‘Then I’ll go after him.’

To give him credit, he doesn’t laugh like most husbands would. I don’t know if I secretly want him to stop me, at least to argue and beg me not to leave, not to do something so foolish and brave and dangerous. Anyway, he doesn’t. I think about the Company men at Caulfield–they’ll be up at the farm first thing, to see if Francis is here. Looking with sly eyes at our faces to see how afraid we are. Well I haven’t the energy to pretend any more. I will look them in the eye and show them I am scared.

I am scared to death.

Donald and Jacob arrive back in Caulfield late in the morning, and Donald arranges for a cart to collect Jammet’s stashed wealth. Ashamed of his earlier suspicion, he sends Jacob alone to bring back the chest, which makes him feel better, and has the added benefit of making him available for lunch with Mrs Knox and her daughters. But they have barely started on the pork before he puts his foot in it.

‘I was wondering if I might meet Mr Sturrock here when I came back,’ he begins conversationally. ‘I believe he is an old acquaintance of your husband’s.’

Mrs Knox looks at Donald with a start of alarm. ‘Mr Sturrock …? Thomas Sturrock?’ The girls exchange rapid, meaningful glances.

‘Well, I don’t know his first name, but … I was told he knows your husband … I’m sorry, did I say something …?’

Mrs Knox has gone decidedly pale, but she sets her mouth into a firm line. ‘It’s quite all right, Mr Moody. I am surprised, that is all. I have not heard that name in a long time.’

Donald looks at his plate, abashed and confused. Susannah is glaring at her sister. Maria clears her throat.

‘The explanation, Mr Moody, is that we had two cousins, Amy and Eve, who went for a walk in the woods, and never returned. Uncle Charles brought in several people to try and find them, and Mr Sturrock was one of them. He had a reputation as a Searcher–you know, for finding children who had been kidnapped by Indians. He looked for a long time, but never found them.’

‘He spent all of Uncle Charles’ money, and he died of a broken heart,’ says Susannah quickly.

‘He had a stroke,’ says Maria to Donald.

Mrs Knox tuts quietly.

Donald is stunned. From Susannah’s face he understands that this is what she began to tell him the day before, stripped of embellishments. And that she is annoyed at having her story taken from her.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he finally remembers to say. ‘What a terrible thing.’

‘It was,’ says Mrs Knox. ‘Neither my sister nor her husband ever recovered. Maria is correct in saying that he suffered a stroke, but he was only fifty-two. It broke him.’

Susannah gives her sister a triumphant look.

In the ensuing silence, the only sound is Donald’s fork clashing against his plate, and suddenly feeling boorish for continuing to eat, his fork hand hovers uncertainly in mid air. Even his chewing sounds horribly loud, but now that his mouth is full, there is not much he can do about it.

‘I hope the pork is to your liking,’ says Mrs Knox with a firm smile; she is not a hostess to be knocked off her stride by anything.

‘Delicious,’ mutters Donald, acutely aware that to his left, Susannah has put down her fork.

‘It was a long time ago,’ says Maria. ‘Seventeen or eighteen years. But you haven’t said, has Francis Ross returned? Or will you be setting off into the bush tomorrow?’

Donald feels a rush of gratitude to her. ‘The latter, at the moment–he has not come back. His parents are worried about him.’

‘Do they think he has disappeared, like …’ Susannah stops before she finishes.

‘Francis Ross is always running off into the woods. He’s quite the native. He must know them like the back of his hand.’

‘Either way, we will clear up the matter by finding him. Jacob is an excellent tracker. A few days’ delay makes no odds to him.’

Now, after lunch, Donald sits in the study, going over his notes from yesterday and adding the events of the morning. He has just decided to go and find this man Sturrock and question him, when Susannah comes in without knocking. He jumps to his feet, and manages, unbelievably, to knock over his chair in his haste.

‘Damn! I’m sorry, I …’

‘Oh, dear me …’

Susannah comes to help him pick it up and they end up standing very close, both laughing, their faces only inches apart. Donald backs away, suddenly terrified that she will sense the hammering of his heart.

‘I came in to apologise,’ she says. ‘We have been such miserable company for you, and you know, I had hoped it would be different, the next time we saw you.’

Her face is quite serious, but there is a faint pinkness in her cheek. Donald is hit by the utterly amazing conviction that this beautiful girl likes him, and this awareness washes over him like the aftershock of strong brandy. He hopes he isn’t grinning like an idiot.

‘You have nothing to apologise for, Miss Knox.’

‘Please, call me Susannah.’

‘Susannah.’

It is the first time he has said her name to her face, and it makes him smile. The feel of her name in his mouth, and the sight of her face looking up at him, sears onto his heart like a fiery brand.

‘You have been the most charming company, and a welcome diversion from all this … business. I am … glad I came–I mean glad that Mackinley chose me.’

‘But I suppose you will go tomorrow, and then we will not see you again.’

‘Well … I expect the Company will need to keep an eye on things here, so … Who knows, I may be back sooner than you think.’

‘Oh. I see.’

She looks so forlorn that he is emboldened to add, ‘But, you know, what would be wonderful … is if you would write to me, and, and … let me know how things are here.’

‘You mean, like a report?’

‘Well … yes, although, I would also like to know … how things are with you. I would like to write to you, if that would be agreeable.’

‘You would like to write to me?’ She sounds charmingly surprised.

‘I would like that very much.’

There is a moment when they are breathless in the knowledge of what they are saying, and then Susannah smiles in response.

‘I would like that too.’

Donald is insanely elated, full of a power and energy he had forgotten existed. He gives thanks, urgently and silently, as, hardly knowing what he does, he rushes out of the house, finding paradoxically that he wants to be alone to celebrate his new-found happiness fully. He walks to Scott’s store, assuming that whatever goes on in Caulfield, John Scott will know about it. He bursts in through the door, trying to keep the foolish grin from his face–a man has died, after all–to see a slender, round-faced woman behind the counter. She looks up at the sound of the door and her first expression is one of fear, quickly masked by a blank neutrality.

John Scott is not there, but Mrs Scott proves nearly as helpful. Donald notices her distracted air, and tries to concentrate as she tells him that Mr Sturrock is staying in their house, and may be there now, she can’t say.

‘You’re welcome to call and see. The maid is there …’ Mrs Scott breaks off, as if she has just remembered something. ‘No, I will send a message, that would be better.’

She disappears through a door at the back. Donald stares out of the window at a sky that looks like curds and remembers Susannah’s soft mouth.

Thomas Sturrock has a way about him that Donald warms to–when told the man was a Searcher, he assumed he would be an old woodsman with coarse manners and the sort of tangy humour he has to endure at the Fort, and he is pleasantly surprised at the refined gentleman he encounters instead.

‘I wonder if I could ask, how did you end up in such a line of work?’

They are drinking Scott’s bitter coffee, in two chairs that Mrs Scott has placed by the stove. Sturrock stares into his cup with disappointment before replying.

‘I’ve done a few things in my time, and I’d written about the Indian way of life. I’ve always been a friend to the Indian, and someone knew this and asked me to help in a case where a boy had been taken. And that worked out, so other people asked me. I never set out to do it, it just came my way. Too old for it now.’

‘And the item you have come to look for, do you have any written proof that Jammet wanted you to have it?’

‘No. He wasn’t planning on getting killed last time I saw him.’

‘And you weren’t aware of any enemies he might have had?’

‘No. He would drive a hard bargain, but that’s no reason to kill a man.’

‘No, indeed.’

‘When he first showed me the bit of bone, I asked him if I could copy down the markings on it, and he could tell I was interested, so he refused, and said he would sell it to me.’

‘But you didn’t buy it then?’

‘No. I was, you see, temporarily out of funds. But he agreed to keep it until I could pay him. I have the money now, but, of course …’–he spreads his hands helplessly–‘I don’t know where it is.’

‘I will talk to Mr Knox about it. We haven’t found a will. If Mr Knox is agreeable, I dare say he could sell it to you. That is, assuming we find it.’

It suddenly occurs to Donald to wonder if Sturrock has already looked for this piece of bone. He remembers the footprints by the cabin. Three sets. Three people who came to look at the cabin last night.

‘That’s generous of you, Mr Moody. I appreciate that.’

‘What sort of thing is it? Is it something from Rome or Egypt?’

‘I’m not altogether sure what it is. It doesn’t seem to be anything like that, but that’s why I need it–I intend to take it to some museum men who know about such things.’

Donald nods, still unsure as to why Sturrock is so interested in this thing. One thing he is certain of, though, is that if someone is keenly interested in a thing, it is as well to tread warily. Could it be that Sturrock had arrived earlier and Jammet had refused to sell him the bone, so Sturrock killed him? Or had Jammet already sold it to someone else? Whichever way he adds it up, Sturrock doesn’t seem a likely killer. But it is also true that there has been no sign of this object, which clearly has a value. In which case, who has it now?

Donald leaves the store with Sturrock’s assurance that he will stay in Caulfield for the next few days. He wonders why it did not occur to him to ask about the Seton girls–perhaps because he finds it impossible to believe this gracious-mannered man is the grasping fraud portrayed by the Knoxes. He wonders–not for the first time–whether his inexperience leads him to form favourable impressions too easily. Should he be more suspicious, like Mackinley, who takes against people on principle, assuming that sooner or later they will disappoint him–and is usually proved right?

On his way down the road he sees Maria carrying a basket. He raises his hat and she smiles slightly. She seems decidedly less hostile since this morning, but he still wouldn’t have risked speaking to her had she not spoken first.

‘Mr Moody. How is the investigation proceeding?’

‘Er, slowly, thank you.’

She pauses, as if waiting for him to say something, so he finds himself saying, ‘I have just been talking to Mr Sturrock.’

She doesn’t betray surprise, nodding as if she expected it. ‘And?’

‘I thought he was charming. Educated, sensitive … not at all what I expected.’

‘I suppose he had to be charming to swindle my uncle out of all his money–there was quite a lot, I believe.’

Donald must have frowned, because she goes on: ‘I know my uncle was desperate enough to do anything, but a man of honour would have told him it was pointless to keep looking for the girls and refused his money. It would have been kinder in the long run. In the end he had neither his daughters nor anything to live on, and he … well, as good as destroyed himself. This was after my aunt died. I know it sounds terrible to say this but … I’ve always supposed they must have been eaten by wolves. Other people say so and I think they are right. Aunt and Uncle could never accept that, though.’

‘How could anyone?’

‘Is that so much worse than what they did think?’

‘I would have thought life, at any cost … is better than death.’

Maria looks at him with those appraising eyes–like a farmer assessing a horse for broken wind. She’ll never find a husband if she looks at all men like that, he thinks, irritated.

‘Perhaps the wolves saved them from a fate worse than death.’ The cliché sounds, in her mouth, like a bad joke.

‘You don’t really think so.’ He is surprised at his boldness in contradicting her.

Maria shrugs. ‘A few years ago, two children here were drowned in the bay. It was a terrible accident. Their parents grieved, of course, but they are still alive. They seem happy enough now–as happy as any of us are.’

‘Perhaps it is lack of certainty that is so hard to bear.’

‘Which enables the unscrupulous to prey upon your hope, until you are sucked dry.’

Donald is surprised again by the things she says. He dimly hears his father’s voice, saying in that lecturing tone of his, ‘The desire to shock is an infantile trait that should disappear with maturity.’ Yet Maria seems anything but immature. He reminds himself that he doesn’t need to agree with his father any more; they are on different continents.

‘Mr Sturrock does not appear to be a rich man,’ Donald says, in a sort of defence.

Maria looks past Donald down the street, then looks at him with a smile. Her eyes, unlike Susannah’s, are blue. ‘Just because you like someone, doesn’t mean that you can trust them.’ And with a bob of the head–almost a mockery of a curtsey–she walks away from him.

Donald spends the rest of the afternoon and evening combing through Jammet’s possessions, but, like others before him, he can find nothing that seems of relevance to his death. The Frenchman’s worldly possessions are stacked in a dry part of the stables, and he and Jacob, who supervised the emptying of the cabin in the interests of security, have sorted them into boxes and piles. It all adds up to surprisingly little. Donald tries not to think about how little his colleagues would be sifting through if he were suddenly swept off this mortal coil. There would be nothing at all to indicate these new but enormously significant feelings for Susannah, for instance. He vows to himself to write to her the instant he leaves Caulfield–absurdly, since they are still in the same house, and since Donald has taken the decision to wait until Mackinley and Knox have returned before setting out on what is probably a wild goose chase, he could be here for another day or two.

He will ask for a picture of her, or a keepsake. Not that he is planning on getting himself killed, of course. Just in case.

When I was a girl, while my parents still lived, I was troubled by what were termed ‘difficulties’. I was seized with paralysing fears that rendered me incapable of movement, even of speech. I felt that the earth was sliding away from under me, and that I could not trust the ground beneath my feet–a terrifying feeling. Doctors took my pulse and stared into my eyes before saying that whatever it was, it would probably disappear with the onset of adulthood (by which I think they meant marriage). However, before this theory could be tested, my mother died in unclear circumstances. I believe she took her own life, although my father denied it. She had been taking laudanum, and an overdose killed her, whether intended or not. I was increasingly plagued by fears until my father could stand it no longer and had me placed in a–not to put too fine a point on it–mental asylum, although it had a fancy name to do with exhausted gentlefolk. Then he too died, leaving me at the mercy of the unscrupulous superintendent, and I ended up in a public asylum, which was at least honest enough to call itself what it was.

In the public asylum laudanum was freely available. First prescribed for the crippling panics, it became the thing I relied on, taking the place of parents or friends. It was widely applied to quieten troublesome patients, but I soon realised that I preferred to be in charge of administering it myself, and had to resort to guile to get it. I found it easy to persuade male members of staff to do things for me, and the superintendent–an idealistic young man called Watson–I could wrap around my little finger. Once you become accustomed to a thing, you forget why you wanted it in the first place.

Later, when my husband decided that my habit was a barrier to real intimacy, I gave it up. Or rather, he took my supply of laudanum and threw it away, leaving me no choice but to do without. He was the only person who thought this a trouble worth taking. It was like being sober again after a prolonged period of drunkenness, and that sobriety seemed wonderful for a while. But sobriety makes you remember things you had forgotten–for example, why you felt the need to take the drug in the first place. When, in years since, times have been hard, I know exactly why I became habituated, and in the past few days I have thought about laudanum almost as much as I have thought about Francis. I know that I could go to the store and buy some. I know that every minute of the day and half the night. The only thing that stops me is that I am the one person in the world Francis can rely on for help. And so far I am not being any help at all.

It is five days since Francis left, and I am walking down the path to Jammet’s cabin when I hear a noise up ahead. A dog runs across my path and whines: a dog I don’t know, large, shaggy and wild-looking–a sled dog. I pause: there is someone at the cabin.

On the rise behind the building, I creep behind a bush with the stealth of practice and wait. A disgruntled insect sinks its jaws into my wrist. Eventually a man comes out of the cabin and whistles. Two dogs run up to him, including the one that was on the path earlier. In my hiding place I hold my breath, and as his face turns towards me I feel a cold tremor down my spine. He is tall for an Indian, strongly built and dressed in blue capote and skin trousers. But it is his face that makes me think of the story of the artificial man. He has a low, broad forehead, high cheekbones, and a nose and mouth that turn downwards like a raptor’s beak and give a powerful impression of wildness and cruelty. Deep lines are incised in the copper skin on either side of the mouth. His hair is black and tangled. I have never seen anyone quite so ugly in my life–a face that could have been hacked out of wood with a blunt axe. If Miss Shelley had needed a pattern for her terrifying monster, this man would have been perfect inspiration.

I wait, hardly daring to breathe until he has gone back inside the cabin, then I ease backwards out of my hiding place. I debate for a moment the best course of action–find Angus on the farm and tell him, or ride straight down to Caulfield and tell Knox? Today I decide not to confront the man myself, because, I reason, he is clearly dangerous. Despite myself, I find it hard to believe that anyone could have a face like that and not have a fierce and cruel disposition. In the end I go and find Angus. He listens to me in silence, then takes his rifle and walks down the path.

I found out later that he walked up to the cabin and went straight in. The stranger was surprised while searching the room upstairs. Angus called to him, and told him, very politely I’m sure, that he would have to escort him down to Caulfield, since this was the scene of a crime and he had no right to be there. The man hesitated but put up no resistance. He picked up his rifle and walked ahead of him the three miles down to the Bay. Angus marched him up to the Knoxes’ back door. While they waited, the stranger stared at the bay with a proud, distant look, as though he didn’t care what anyone might do to him. By the time Angus left to come home, the stranger had been arrested and imprisoned. Angus took pity on the two dogs, which Knox refused to let into his yard, and brought them home, claiming they would be no bother. I thought he must have found something to like in the stranger, to go to the trouble.

Andrew Knox sits across from Mackinley and smokes his pipe. The firelight turns their faces a warm shade of orange–even the whey-faced Mackinley loses his sallowness. Knox cannot share the other’s blatant satisfaction. They questioned the man for over an hour and had discovered nothing concrete other than his name, William Parker, and that he was a trapper who had traded with Jammet before. He claimed he had not known Jammet was dead, but had called on him in passing and found the cabin empty. He had searched the house to find some clue as to what had happened.

‘You say a murderer wouldn’t come back to the scene of his crime,’ Mackinley breaks the silence. ‘But if he had wanted the guns and so on, and didn’t find them the first time, he could have waited until things died down, and come back to search again.’

Knox acknowledges the truth of this.

‘Or perhaps he thought he had left something behind and came back to retrieve it.’

‘We didn’t find anything that didn’t belong there.’

‘Perhaps we missed it.’

Knox fixes his teeth in the groove worn in the pipe-stem; it is a pleasurable feeling–teeth and stem fit together perfectly after long use. Mackinley is too hasty to condemn the trapper, allowing his desire for a solution to shape the facts rather than the other way round. Knox wants to point this out but without offending his pride–after all, Mackinley is officially in charge.

‘It is possible that he is simply what he says, a trapper who has traded with him in the past, who did not know he was dead.’

‘And who goes snooping through an empty house?’

‘That is not a crime–or even unusual.’

‘It isn’t a crime but it is suspicious. We have to infer what is most likely from what we have.’

‘We don’t have anything. I’m not sure we have any grounds for holding him at all.’

Knox has insisted that the man is not a prisoner and must be treated well. He has had Adam take a tray of food to the warehouse where he is being kept, and light a fire. He hated having to ask Scott for another favour, but he could not countenance keeping the man in a room, even a locked room, in the same house as his daughters and wife. Despite his words there is something about the stranger’s face that evokes dark and terrifying thoughts. It reminds him of faces in engravings of the Indian wars: painted faces, twisted in fury, blasphemous, alien.

They unlock the door of the warehouse for the second time, and hold up their lanterns, to see the prisoner sitting immobile near the fire. He does not turn his head as the door opens.

‘Mr Parker,’ calls Knox. ‘We would like to talk some more.’

They sit on chairs brought earlier for this purpose. Parker does not speak or turn to face them. Only his breath, condensing in pale clouds by his face, indicates a living man.

‘How did you come by the name Parker?’ asks Mackinley. His tone is insulting, as if he’s accusing the man of lying about his identity.

‘My father was an English native. Samuel Parker. His father came from England.’

‘Was your father a Company man?’

‘He worked for the Company all his life.’

‘But you don’t.’

‘No.’

Mackinley is leaning forward, mention of the Company drawing him like a magnet. ‘You used to work for them?’

‘I served an apprenticeship. I am a trapper now.’

‘And you traded with Jammet?’

‘Yes.’

‘For how long?’

‘Many years.’

‘Why did you leave the Company?’

‘To be beholden to no one.’

‘Did you know that Laurent Jammet was a member of the North America Company?’

The man looks at him, half-amused. Knox casts a glance at Mackinley–did he find this out from the other Frenchman?

‘I didn’t trade with a company, I traded with him.’

‘Are you a member of the North America Company?’

Now Parker laughs harshly. ‘I am a member of no company. I trap furs and sell them, that’s all.’

‘But you have no furs at the moment.’

‘It is fall.’

Knox puts a warning hand on Mackinley’s arm. He tries to make his tone friendly and reasonable. ‘You understand why we have to ask these questions–Mr Jammet died a brutal death. We need to find out what we can about him, so that we can bring the perpetrator to justice.’

‘He was my friend.’

Knox sighs. Before he can say anything else, Mackinley speaks again:

‘Where were you on the day and night of November fourteenth–six days ago?’

‘I told you, I was travelling south from Sydney House.’

‘Did anyone see you?’

‘I travel alone.’

‘When did you leave Sydney House?’

The man hesitates, for the first time. ‘I wasn’t at Sydney House itself, just in that direction.’

‘But you said you were coming from Sydney House.’

‘I said Sydney House so you would know where I was. That was the direction I came from. I was in the bush.’

‘And what were you doing there?’

‘Hunting.’

‘But you said it isn’t the season for furs.’

‘Hunting for meat.’

Mackinley looks at Knox and raises his eyebrows. ‘Is that normal for this time of year?’

Parker shrugs. ‘It is normal any time of year.’

Knox clears his throat. ‘Thank you, Mr Parker. Well … that will be all for now.’

He is embarrassed by his voice, which sounds like that of an old man, fussy and womanish. They get up to go, then Mackinley turns back to the man by the fire. He picks up his mug of water from the tray and pours it on the fire, extinguishing it.

‘Give me your firebag.’

Parker looks at Mackinley, who holds his eye. Parker’s eyes are opaque in the lamplight. He looks as if he wants to kill Mackinley right there. Slowly he takes the leather bag from around his neck, and hands it to Mackinley. Mackinley takes it but Parker does not let go.

‘How do I know I’ll get it back?’

Knox steps closer, anxious to defuse the tension in the air. ‘You’ll get it back. I’ll see to it myself.’

Parker lets go and the two men walk out, taking the only lanterns and leaving the prisoner in darkness and cold. Knox peers back in as he pulls the door closed, seeing–or does he only imagine it?–the half-breed as a concentration of darkness in the dark space.

‘Why did you do that?’ Knox asks as they return through the quiet town.

‘You want him to set fire to the place and escape? I know these people. They have no scruples. Did you see the way he looked at me? Like he wanted to take my scalp then and there.’

He holds the bag up in front of the lantern–a leather pouch, beautifully decorated with embroidery. Inside is the man’s equipment for survival–flints, tinder, tobacco, and some dried and unappetising strips of nameless meat. Without it, in the wilderness, he would probably die.

Mackinley is jubilant. ‘Well, how did you like that? He changed his story so that we can’t prove he was where he said he was. He could have been in Dove River a week ago and no one any the wiser.’

Knox can think of nothing to say to this. He too had felt a tremor of doubt as Parker hesitated–a gap opened in the man’s confident demeanour, he had not known quite what to say.

‘It’s not proof,’ he says at last.

‘It is circumstantial. Would you rather believe the boy did it?’

Knox sighs, feeling very tired, but not yet tired enough to rise to it. ‘What is all this about the North America Company? I’ve never heard of it.’

‘It’s not an official company, but it might become one. André told me Jammet was involved. He is too. French Canadian traders have been talking about setting up a company in opposition to us. They have backing from the States, and there is interest even among some of the British here.’

Mackinley’s jaw is taut. He is a man of simple loyalties; the thought of any Canadian of British extraction siding against the Company is hurtful to him. To Knox it is less surprising. The Company has always been run by wealthy men in London, sending their representatives (they refer to them as servants) out to the colony to extract its riches. To those who were born here, it is a foreign power, stripping their land of its wealth, scattering crumbs in return.

He chooses his words carefully. ‘So Jammet could have been seen as an enemy of the Hudson Bay Company?’

‘If you are implying that a Company man would have done that to him … I assure you, that is quite unthinkable.’

‘I’m not implying anything. But if it is a fact, then we cannot ignore it. How great was his involvement with this North America Company?’

‘The man didn’t know. Just that Jammet had mentioned it in the past.’

‘And it is certain that André was in the Sault when Jammet died?’

‘Lying in a corner of a bar, insensible, according to the landlord. It would not have been possible for him to be killing Jammet in Dove River at the same time.’

Knox feels a wave of irritation at the events of this evening. At Mackinley’s officiousness and certainty, at the prisoner’s raw and powerful presence, even at the unfortunate Jammet and his messy death. In its short life Caulfield has always been a peaceful community that has no gaol and never needed one. Now, for the last few days, wherever he looks there is violence and bitterness.

His wife is still awake when he goes upstairs. Even when the man Parker is out of sight, he is in everyone’s mind. There may be a murderer in their town, separated from them by thin wooden walls. There is something about the man that makes it easy to believe in his guilt. A man cannot help his face, of course, and should not be judged by it. Is that what he is doing?

‘Some people don’t make it easy for you to like them,’ he observes as he undresses.

‘Are you talking about the prisoner, or Mr Mackinley?’

Knox allows himself a suppressed smile. He looks at her face and thinks she looks tired. ‘Are you all right?’

He loves the way her hair waves when she lets it down, just as lustrously brown as when they married. She is proud of it and brushes it for five minutes every night until it crackles and clings to the hairbrush.

‘I was going to ask you the same question.’

‘Quite all right. I’m looking forward to all this being over. I prefer Caulfield when it is quiet and dull.’

She shifts over as he climbs between the sheets. ‘Have you heard the other news?’

He can tell by her voice that it is not good. ‘Other news? What is it?’

She sighs. ‘Sturrock is here.’

‘Sturrock the Searcher? In Caulfield?’

‘Yes. Mr Moody has met him. He knew Jammet, apparently.’

‘Good God.’ He never ceases to be amazed by what his wife can pick up on the rumour circuit. ‘Good God,’ he repeats quietly. He lies down, doubts crowding into his mind. Who would have thought Jammet had so many unseen connections? Some peculiar power extends from the empty cabin, drawing the unlikely and the undesirable to Caulfield, in pursuit of who knows what. He has not seen Thomas Sturrock for ten years, not since shortly before Charles died. He has tried to forget that meeting. Now try as he may, he cannot think of an innocent reason for Sturrock’s presence.

‘Do you think he did it?’

‘Who?’ For a moment he can’t remember what it is she is talking about.

‘Who! The prisoner, of course. Do you think he did it?’

‘Go to sleep,’ says Knox, and kisses her.

The day before they left, Donald spent valuable time combing Scott’s store for a present for Susannah. He considered buying her a fountain pen; although it would be an apt present on parting, she might find it too heavy-handed a reminder of her promise to write to him. There was a limited choice of items, and in the end he settled for an embroidered handkerchief, ignoring the potential implication that he might be expecting her to cry in his absence–she probably wouldn’t think of that.

That afternoon Susannah loitered for hours in the library of their house, waiting for Donald to find her by chance, leafing through a book. She had the opportunity to read one right through by the time he finally realised what was going on, but had not; the novels in the library were mostly dull, having been chosen by her father when young, or by Maria, who had strange tastes. Donald heard her cough, and timidly opened the door holding one hand behind his back.

‘We are leaving tomorrow. Before dawn, so we won’t see you.’

She hastily put down the treatise on fishing and glanced at Donald with her irresistible sideways look. ‘It will be very dull without you.’

Donald smiled, his heart rioting inside his ribcage. ‘I hope you don’t think it a liberty, but I bought you this. I wanted to give you something before I left.’

He held out the little parcel, wrapped in the store’s brown paper and tied with a piece of ribbon. Susannah smiled and opened it, unfolding the handkerchief.

‘Oh, it’s so pretty! You are too kind, Mr Moody.’

‘Please, call me Donald.’

‘Oh … Donald. Thank you so much. I will keep it with me always.’

‘I can think of no greater honour.’

He wavered on the brink of saying how he envied the handkerchief, but lost confidence, perhaps fortunately. He was not to know that Susannah had another just like it, bought from the same store and presented to her less than a year ago by a smitten local youth. But now Susannah was blushing; the faint wash of colour in her cheeks made her seem to glow from within.

‘Now I am embarrassed I have nothing to give you in return.’

‘I don’t want anything in return.’ Again, he hovered on the brink of daring to ask for a kiss, but again his courage failed him. ‘Only that you will write to me now and again, if you are not too busy.’

‘Oh yes, I will write to you. And perhaps, if you are not too busy, you may write to me occasionally.’

‘Every day!’ he said recklessly.

‘Oh, I think you will be too occupied to do that. I do hope it won’t be … dangerous.’

The remaining few minutes in the library passed in a sweet daze. Donald didn’t know what to say next, but felt that the ball was in his court and eventually plucked up the courage to take one of her hands in his. Then someone banged the Sumatran gong that stood in the hall–the signal for dinner–and she withdrew her hand, otherwise who knows what might have ensued. It makes him dizzy to think about it.

There are only two ways to leave Dove River: south to the bay, or north, following the river’s course through the forest. Jacob picks up the trail beyond the Price homestead. Angus Ross told them he found signs that Francis had passed Swallow Lake, and Jacob only pauses to assess the tracks and determine whether they were likely to have been made by the boy. The path is clear and they walk at a fair pace, passing the lake in early afternoon. Jacob kneels to take a closer look.

‘It has been some days, but more than one person came through here.’

‘At the same time?’

Jacob shrugs.

‘It could be that French trader. He came this way, didn’t he?’

‘More than one person went in this direction: two footprints, different sizes.’

They follow the trail for several miles. Where a tributary joins the Dove the trail turns westward and follows that, over stony ground that shows no traces. Donald follows Jacob, assuming he knows what he is doing, but is relieved to see a patch of ground near the stream where footprints have pressed leaves and moss into the mud.

‘Say he has been travelling on foot for six, seven days. And he is tired and hungry. I think we go faster. We catch him.’

‘But where is he going? Where does this lead?’

Jacob doesn’t know. The trail goes on, winding through the forest alongside the river, always climbing, but there is no sign that it leads anywhere other than into boundless wilderness.

They stop while it is still light and Jacob shows Donald how to cut branches for their shelter. Although he has been in Canada over a year, this is Donald’s first taste of the native way of life, and he is elated at the unfamiliarity of it. He is throwing off his past and his bookish, finicky shell, finally becoming a man of action, a rugged frontiersman, a true Company Adventurer. He relishes the prospect of relating his experience to the men back at Fort Edgar.

After they have built the shelter and made a fire and Jacob has cooked a mush of meat and corn, Donald hunches by the fire and takes out pen and paper to write to Susannah. He hadn’t thought how the letters are going to get to her, but presumably there will be some form of habitation along the way from where delivery is possible. He writes ‘Dear Susannah,’ and then pauses. Should he describe the trek today, the forest with its dark greens and flaming yellows, the purplish rocks that rear through brilliant moss, the sleeping arrangements? He rejects those as being potentially tedious to her, and writes ‘It has been a most interesting …’ before somehow succumbing to the heat of the fire and losing consciousness, so that Jacob has to jolt him awake and push him under the birch roof, where he collapses onto the fir branches. Exhaustion hits him like a sledgehammer, and he is too tired to notice the moon cast ethereal shadows among the trees; certainly too tired to see Jacob observe the halo of ice crystals that surrounds it, and frown.

I have, over the years, built up a fine, if eclectic, collection of books, and have just lent some of them to Ida. Unlike her mother she is grateful, and she seems genuinely touched that I would trust her with something so valuable. I wouldn’t have done it before last week, but now even my most precious possessions don’t seem that important. One of the books I lend her is my dictionary, a book I have treasured for twenty years. I kept it with me throughout my asylum career, making up for my lost education, but Ida particularly requested it, as the Pretty household has never seen such a thing.

My mother gave it to me shortly before she died, as if to make up for the lack I would soon have of her. Small enough recompense, you might think, but not entirely useless. I hated coming across words in books that I did not know and doggedly looked them up: ‘limpid’, ‘termagant’, ‘intimated’. I looked up ‘suicide’ after her death. I thought it might help me understand why she had done it. The definition was crisp and succinct, two things she never was. ‘The act of self-destruction’ sounded purposeful and violent, whereas my mother was dreamy and gentle, often absent-minded. I asked my father, to see if he could explain–I assumed he knew her better than I did. He blustered and ranted that it was nonsense–she would never have done such a thing, it was a sin even to think it. Then, to my acute embarrassment, he cried. I put my arms round him, trying to comfort him as he sobbed. After a minute or two of us standing in a simulacrum of father-daughter togetherness that made no difference whatsoever–a minute or two that seemed to last an hour–I let go of him and left the room. He didn’t seem to notice.

I don’t think either of us knew her at all.

I realised later that he was angry because I had guessed the truth. I think he blamed himself, and I believe he sent me to the asylum because he was afraid he had depressed my mother, and was doing the same to me. He was not an inspiring sort of person and I suspect he was right.

I have spent my life trying not to be like either of my parents. Now that I am approaching the age my mother was when she died, I don’t know how successful I have been: my only child has run away in these terrible circumstances and clearly I can’t blame it all on his Irish blood. I have played a part, I don’t yet know how damaging, in his fate.

It gives me some relief to talk to Ida, who is more cheerful today, and there is the added spice of gossip about the man locked in the warehouse in Caulfield. Ida does a good imitation of Scott puffing his cheeks with indignation at being asked to give over his precious real estate for such a purpose. And she adds something interesting–her brothers found signs that the man had come past their farm on his way to Jammet’s, which means he came from the north. Which means it is possible he saw Francis. Which means that, even if he is a villain, I have to go and ask him. And just before she leaves she mentions Thomas Sturrock, who is staying at the Scott house. Did I know he was the famous Indian Searcher who failed to find the Seton girls? The whole town is talking about it. I nod, vaguely, and say I’ve heard something about it. I wonder why he failed to mention it when we discussed the case. One more instance where I am the last to know.

Predictably, Knox kicks up a fuss about my talking to the prisoner. He argues that I will not get anything out of him, that they have already asked him, that it might be prejudicial, that it would be unsuitable, and finally that it will be dangerous. I remain reasonable. I know that if I stay there long enough and refuse to go away he will eventually give in, and he does, with much headshaking and gloomy sighing. I assure him I am not scared of the man, however fearsome he looks–he has everything to lose if he behaves badly (unless he is convicted, when I suppose it makes no difference how many murders he is hanged for, but I don’t say so). In any case, Knox insists on sending his servant with me, with instructions to sit by the warehouse door and keep an eye on things.

Adam unlocks the door to the warehouse, which has been cleared of enough dry goods that the prisoner is marooned in an ocean of space. There are two windows near the roof, presenting scant escape opportunities, but in any case he is slumped on a pallet and takes no notice when the door opens. He may have been asleep–he only stirs when Adam calls out, whereupon he sits up slowly, pulling a thin blanket around him. There is no fire and the cold seems even harsher and more insidious than outside.

I turn to Adam. ‘Are you trying to freeze the man to death?’

Adam mumbles–something about burning us all to the ground–and I order him to fetch some hot stones for our feet, and some coffee. Adam looks at me in astonishment. ‘I am not to leave you.’

‘Fetch them this instant. Don’t be ridiculous, we can’t sit here talking in this cold. I’m sure I shall be quite all right until you get back.’ I fix him with my most imperious stare until he goes, disconcertingly locking the door behind him.

The prisoner does not look at me, but sits like a statue. I move a chair over to a spot a few feet from the pallet and sit down. I am nervous but determined not to show it. If I want his help I have to try to look as though I trust him.

‘Mr Parker.’ I have considered how to put this at length. ‘My name is Mrs Ross. I come to you asking for help. I apologise for taking advantage of your … detainment.’

He doesn’t look at me or acknowledge that I am there in any way. It occurs to me that perhaps he is a little deaf.

‘Mr Parker,’ I go on, louder, ‘I believe you came from the north, past Swallow Lake?’

After a long pause, he speaks, quietly. ‘What is it to you?’

‘It is this: I have a son, Francis. Seven days ago he went away. I think he went north. He knows no one up there. I am worried. I wondered whether you had seen any sign …? He is only seventeen. He has … dark hair. A slight build.’

Well that’s it. There’s no other way of saying it, and anyway I find my throat has constricted so fiercely I’m not sure I could get more words out.

Parker seems to be thinking; his face has lost that blank cast and his black eyes are fixed on mine.

‘Seven days ago?’

I could kick myself. I should have said eight. Or nine. I nod.

‘And Jammet was found six days ago.’

‘My son didn’t kill him, Mr Parker.’

‘How do you know?’

I feel a surge of anger at his question. Of course I know. I’m his mother. ‘He was his friend.’

Parker does something very unexpected then: he laughs. Like his voice, it is low and harsh, but not unpleasant.

‘I too was his friend. Yet Mr Knox and Mr Mackinley seem to think I killed him.’

‘Well …’ I am taken aback by this turn of events. ‘I suppose they don’t know you. But I think an innocent man would surely do his utmost to help a woman in my situation. That would establish him as a man of good character.’

Am I imagining it, or is he actually smiling? The down-turned mouth twists a little.

‘So if I help you, you think Mr Mackinley will release me?’

I cannot tell if he is being sarcastic. ‘That will depend on circumstances I know nothing about, Mr Parker, such as whether you are guilty or not.’

‘I am not. Are you?’

‘I …’ I hardly know what to say. ‘I found him. I saw what had been done to him!’

Now he looks genuinely surprised. And I have the overriding impression that he wants to know what I saw. And, it occurs to me in a rush, if he wants to know, then it stands to reason that he cannot have done it.

‘You saw him? They did not tell me what had been done.’

If he is lying, he makes a convincing show. He leans forward. I try not to lean away from him, but his face is terrifying. I can almost feel the anger radiating from him.

‘Tell me what you saw. And I may be able to help.’

‘I can’t do that. I can’t make a deal with you.’

‘Then why should I help you?’

‘Why would you not?’

Suddenly he stands up and strides to the wall of the warehouse–just a few paces, but I flinch before I can stop myself. He sighs. Perhaps he is used to people being afraid of him. I wonder where Adam is with the coffee–he seems to have been gone at least an hour.

‘I am a half-breed, accused of killing a white man. Do you think they care if he was my friend? Do you think they believe anything I say?’

Parker is standing in a particularly shadowy patch of the warehouse and I cannot see his expression. Then he turns back to his pallet bed.

‘I am tired. I will have to try and remember. Ask me tomorrow.’

He lies on the bed and pulls the blanket over him, his back to me.

‘Mr Parker, I beg you to think on this.’ I’m not at all certain that I can argue my way back in here. ‘Mr Parker …?’

When Adam returns I am waiting inside the door. He looks at me in astonishment, the pot of coffee steaming like a miniature volcano in the dank air.

‘Mr Parker and I are finished for the time being,’ I tell him. ‘But why don’t you leave the coffee here.’

Adam looks unhappy but does as I suggest, placing the pot and a cup a cautious distance from the pallet.

And that, it would seem, is that.

Andrew Knox sometimes wishes he were not the upstanding community elder he has become. When he retired from the law it was to get away from all those people who begged him to instil order into their tangled, messy lives. People who lied and cheated but still thought the world was conspiring against them and that whatever iniquities they had committed, none of their troubles were of their own making. As if it is not enough to have the whole town in an uproar because a potential murderer is in their midst, John Scott was in his study this morning, complaining that he must have his warehouse back, or substantial compensation for giving his building over for the town’s benefit, as he put it, or else he will have to take up the matter with the government. Knox wished him luck. Other inhabitants have stopped him in the street to ask why the culprit has not been moved to a proper gaol–no one seems to entertain the possibility that he is innocent. And Mackinley is in no hurry to leave–Knox suspects him of wanting to extract a confession in person, so that he can parade the conviction like a trophy. Knox is caught between the hungers of ambitious men and wants no more to do with any of it.

And then there is the business of Sturrock, which he can’t ignore.

Mary taps on the door and says that Mrs Ross is here to see him–again. The woman won’t leave him alone. He nods and sighs inwardly–he has a sinking feeling that if he said no she would wait outside in the hall–or even, God forbid, in the street.

‘Mr Knox …’ she starts speaking before the door is closed.

‘Mrs Ross, I trust your talk was helpful?’

‘He wouldn’t talk. But he knows something. I have to come back tomorrow.’

‘I can’t let you do that, you see …’

‘He didn’t do it.’

She sounds so certain he stares at her with his mouth open, until he remembers to close it. ‘What makes you so sure? Feminine intuition?’

She smiles sarcastically–an unpleasant trait in a woman. ‘He wanted to know how Jammet died. He didn’t know. And I am sure he knows something about Francis. But he doesn’t trust Mr Mackinley to be fair on a … half-breed.’

Knox suspects that Parker doesn’t trust him either, but she is being diplomatic.

‘Perhaps you also know what he was doing in Jammet’s cabin?’

‘I’ll ask him.’

Knox frowns. The whole thing is getting out of hand. He forgets that a few moments ago he was wishing himself free of his responsibilities–the prospect of a farmer’s wife taking them from him is preposterous.

‘I’m sorry, it’s quite out of the question. We are going to move the prisoner as soon as possible. I cannot let anyone who feels like it walk in and talk to him.’

‘Mr Knox.’ She takes a step towards him, almost as if (were she a man) to threaten him. ‘My son is in the bush and the Company men may not find him. He may be lost. He may be injured. He is a boy and if you stop me finding out whatever I can, you may be responsible for his death.’

Knox has to make an effort not to step backwards. There is something about her–or perhaps it is that sense of inadequacy that tall, handsome women tend to provoke in him. Looking into her flinty eyes–eyes of a peculiar grey and mineral hardness–he is aware of the fierceness of her will.

‘I would have thought that you, of all people, would understand what it is to lose a child. Would you deny me help if it is possible?’

Knox sighs, infuriated that she should use the Seton tragedy against him, but also aware that he will, as a result, give in. If the boy has simply got himself lost he doesn’t like to think about the consequences. And perhaps Mackinley doesn’t have to know. If he is careful, then no one else need ever find out.

He tells her to come back in the morning, very early, impressing on her the need for discretion, and sighs with relief as she goes. He supposes it is only natural for a mother to act so in protection of her child; it is just that it would be more natural (and he would find it easier to sympathise) if she cried or showed some softness in the doing.

‘Mr Knox!’ Mackinley barges into his study without knocking. Really the man is becoming more and more unbearable; he saunters through the house as though he owns it. ‘I think one more day should do it, don’t you?’

Knox looks at him wearily. ‘Do what, Mr Mackinley?’

‘Get the fellow to confess. No point stringing things out.’

‘What if he doesn’t confess?’

‘Och, I don’t think that will be a problem.’ Mackinley smiles cunningly. ‘Deprive these fellows of their freedom and you soon have them grovelling. Can’t stand the confinement, like animals.’

Knox looks at him with hatred. Mackinley doesn’t notice.

‘I thought I’d have another go before dinner.’

‘I have urgent paperwork. Can it wait?’

‘I don’t see why you should trouble yourself, Mr Knox. I am quite prepared to question him alone.’

‘I think it would be … sounder if both of us were present.’

‘I don’t think I’ll be in any danger.’ He pulls back his jacket to reveal a revolver in his waistband. Knox feels a flush of anger.

‘It wasn’t your safety I was thinking of, Mr Mackinley. Rather the need to have more than one witness to whatever is said.’

‘Then I will take Adam, if that is your concern. The key, if you please.’

Knox bites his tongue and opens the drawer where the two keys to the warehouse lie in his custody. He wonders whether he should change his plans and go with him. He has started to think of Mackinley as a criminal, and of course he is nothing of the sort, but a respected servant of the Company. He gives him one of the keys and forces a smile.

‘Adam should be in the kitchen.’

After Mackinley has gone, Knox hears raised voices from the drawing room. His daughters are quarrelling. He briefly considers intervening, as he used to when they were younger, but cannot raise the energy. Besides, they are grown women now. He listens to the familiar sounds: Susannah’s voice dissolving into tears, Maria’s lecturing tone, which makes him wince, a door slam, and then footsteps running up the stairs. Grown women is what they are.

Sturrock has been talking with Mrs Scott, and she looks up at me with her habitual nervous air, presumably in case it is her husband come to find fault. I get an impression that they have been having quite an intimate conversation: when I walk into the store they subtly draw away from each other as if signalling the end of a confidence. I feel disgruntled; I had thought I was his co-conspirator. It seems Mr Sturrock makes a habit of holding whispered conversations with other people’s wives.

He turns to me and smiles, bowing his silver head. ‘Mrs Ross. You have found the warmest and most welcoming place in Caulfield on this cold day.’

I nod, a little stiffly. For some reason I was half-expecting him not to know me.

‘Can I get you a cup of coffee, Mrs Ross? On the house?’ Mrs Scott looks at me with unusual boldness. She seems to have taken a sort of courage from Sturrock’s presence to make free with her husband’s coffee.

‘Thank you. That would be welcome.’

I would have had it even at their outrageous prices. I feel cold to the bone. Warehouse cold. Murder cold. Despite what I said to Knox, I have no idea whether Parker is a killer or not. My certainty that he did not know what had happened to Jammet faded as soon as Adam padlocked the door.

‘You did not tell me you were acquainted with Mr Knox,’

I say, to get it over with, wishing I sounded less petulant.

‘I don’t believe I did. I’m sorry.’

‘You could have gone to him and asked about Jammet’s possessions. You didn’t have to sneak around like a thief.’

Like me. I feel betrayed. I liked him more when he was as furtive as I was.

‘My acquaintance with Knox is an old one. I don’t believe he will know me now.’

‘Does he know you’re here?’

‘I think it would be hard for him not to know.’

‘I don’t mean to pry. I just feel rather … at a disadvantage.’

We sip our coffee in silence for some moments.

‘I did not mean to mislead you the other evening, Mrs Ross, please believe me. Sometimes one is disappointed in one’s own part in things. We always want to be the hero, don’t we? The hero of the story or … nothing.’

‘I am sure you did your utmost.’

He sighs. I am inclined to believe him, but am aware this is more to do with his charm than with any famously unerring judgement on my part.

‘If they were not there to be found, then nothing you could have done would have brought them back.’

He smiles. ‘But some say, as I am sure you have heard, that I looked too long, and that I kept hope alive when it should have been dead and buried.’

‘If a parent chooses to hope, then nothing anyone else can say will stop them.’

It comes out harsher than I meant it, and Sturrock looks at me with that look of eloquent compassion I saw on him before. The cynical part of me wonders how many families, tortured with worry, saw that look, and were comforted by it.

Of course it is not compassion that is needed in my situation, but action. Something that has been turning over inside me, nameless and frightening, crystallises all of a sudden. And I know that I can no longer rely on other people, not on anyone. They only disappoint in the end.

Knox finds Sturrock in residence at the Scotts’. He announces himself to the maid, and Scott comes to greet him. He looks at him with raw curiosity, but Knox says nothing about why he has come. Let them all gossip (they will anyway, whether he allows it or not), it is none of their concern. Perhaps they will think Sturrock another murder suspect.

He is shown to the room at the back of the house that the Scotts let out to travelling salesmen. The servant knocks on the door and when Sturrock answers, Knox goes in.

Thomas Sturrock has aged since he last saw him. But then it must be ten years–and the ten years between fifty and sixty can mark the difference between a man in the prime of life and his dotage. Knox wonders if he himself is as changed. Sturrock is as straight and elegant as ever, but seems thinner, drier, more fragile. He stands up when Knox comes in, masking his surprise, or whatever he feels, with an easy smile.

‘Mr Knox. I suppose I should not be surprised.’

‘Mr Sturrock.’ They shake hands. ‘I hope you are keeping well.’

‘I manage to find things to occupy me in my retirement.’

‘Good. I expect you know why I’ve come.’

Sturrock shrugs extravagantly. Even with frayed cuffs and slightly stained trousers he gives the impression of being foppish. It has counted against him.

Knox feels awkward. He had forgotten the effect of Sturrock’s presence and had almost managed to persuade himself that the accepted story going round Caulfield was true.

‘I’m sorry about … well, you know. I know how people talk. It can’t be pleasant.’

Sturrock smiles. ‘I am not tempted to contradict them, if that’s what’s worrying you.’

Knox nods, relieved. ‘It’s my wife I’m worried about. It would be a cause of such anguish to her, and my daughters … I’m sure you understand.’

‘Yes, of course.’

He doesn’t agree, Knox realises; he can’t trust him. He wants his reputation back.

‘Anyway, what brings you to Caulfield? I have heard all sorts of strange stories.’

‘I expect they are true,’ Sturrock says with a smile.

Just then Knox hears a creak outside the room. He gets up noiselessly and goes to open the door. John Scott is standing there with a tray, trying to look as if he has only just arrived.

‘I thought you might like a wee dram,’ he says with unconvincing heartiness.

‘Thank you.’ Knox takes the tray with a stern look. ‘Most thoughtful of you. I believe you need me to write in support of your application for compensation?’

Scott’s face goes sullen and then, in an attempt to salvage the situation, conspiratorial. ‘He’s an interesting man,’ he whispers, jerking his head in the direction of Sturrock.

Scott’s face is disturbingly pink and shiny in the lamplight. Knox is suddenly reminded of a pig on his parents’ land that used to snuffle coquettishly for titbits, its snout poked through the hedge at the bottom of the garden. He is so surprised at this collision of images that he merely nods and pushes the door shut with his foot.

He puts the tray down on a table. ‘Mr Scott is not only our grocer, miller and entrepreneur, but also the local gazette.’ He pours a glass of whisky for Sturrock. ‘Can I be of any assistance to you, while you are here? Short of offering you a room in my house, which would be … inappropriate.’

‘Kind of you to ask.’ Sturrock appears to think the matter over, which he doesn’t need to do. He tells Knox the reason for his presence, and Knox promises to do his best, though privately bewildered by the request. Half an hour later and several dollars lighter, he makes his way out of the house and finds his feet taking him towards the warehouse that looms, a large, windowless monolith, apart from the illuminated houses.

He pauses outside–the light has almost gone–listening for sounds from within. He can hear nothing, and takes out the second key, confident that Mackinley will have gone.

Even before his eyes adjust to the darkness inside, he realises something has changed. The prisoner does not turn to face him.

‘Mr Parker? It is Mr Knox.’

Now the man moves and reveals his face. For a moment his eyes do not understand what he sees–the face appears, as before, like a rough carving of a face, only one that has been left unfinished, or spoilt by an unfortunate slip of the knife. With a shiver of recognition, Knox sees the swelling of brow and cheek, the blood darkening the skin.

‘Good God, what has happened?’ he cries out, before his brain catches up with his mouth and he bites his tongue.

‘Is it your turn?’ The man’s voice is harsh, but without obvious emotion.

‘What did he do?’ He should have insisted on accompanying Mackinley. He should have listened to his doubts. Damm the man! He has ruined everything.

‘He thought he could encourage me to confess. But I cannot confess to what I did not do.’

Knox is pacing up and down in his agitation. He remembers Mrs Ross’s assurance that Parker was innocent, and is inclined to agree with her. Knox experiences the rising panic of a juggler who has suddenly found he has too many balls in the air, and realises that disaster, and attendant humiliation, are imminent.

‘I will … find you something for that.’

‘Nothing is broken.’

‘I … I apologise. This should never have happened.’

‘I will tell you something I would not tell the other.’

Knox stares at the man in wild hope.

‘Laurent had enemies. And the worst of his enemies were in the Company. He was a threat to them, alive. Dead he is no threat.’

‘What sort of threat?’

‘He was a founder of the North America Company. But more than that, he was formerly one of them, as I was. The Company do not like those who turn against them.’

‘Who in the Company?’

A long pause.

‘I don’t know.’

Knox feels a trickle of sweat making its way down his breastbone, despite the cold of the warehouse. Something has occurred to him, something stupid and reckless and insistent, something quite unlike anything he has ever done before–and he knows what he is about to do.

All through dinner that evening, he watches Mackinley wax jovial under the influence of wine and female attention. His voice rises with his colour and he expounds the virtues of great Company men he has known. He discusses a Company factor who famously defused a quarrel between two Indian tribes, to the detriment of both, and then a particularly admired outdoorsman, who would think nothing of trekking hundreds of miles in the depths of winter. Apparently even the native guides admired his prowess at navigation and survival, thus proving that there is nothing innately superior about the natives’ wilderness craft; nothing that, given the right circumstances, the white man (especially a Scottish white man) will not excel at.

Knox watches Mackinley talk, and if he does not take part in the conversation, he manages to hide his repulsion for the other man. Afterwards, his wife will ask him if he is quite well, and he will smile and say that he is tired, but that there is no need to worry.

From now on he will be talked about; rumours will travel vast distances, telling of his incompetence, his unfitness. Fortunately he is retired. If his reputation is the price to pay for justice, then so be it.

He has shut his mouth on the truth before. He can do it again.